Are There Whistleblowers Protecting Laws Available?
Several Necessary and Important Laws That Protect Whistleblowers From Retaliation Of Their Employers
What is a whistleblower? It’s a person who reports on the misconduct of an organization; generally a company the person works for. This type of lawsuit can be brought against any organization – government entities included – that have violated a regulation or law. A recent case of Edward Snowden who uncovered government wrongdoing and revealed the top secret while he was working for National Security Agency as a contractor got a global spotlight as the severity and the level of information that was released.Whistleblower laws have been designed to protect the rights of the whistleblower including ensuring the reported company does not retaliate against the person. However, there are some obvious boundary that such laws will draw a line and exclude a certain situation such as the individual's employment status (whether they are official employees or temporary contractors), or a certain category of organization or employers.
What Laws Can Protect Whistleblowers From Employer Retaliation
These types of laws, and others similar to it, have provisions that prohibit employers from retaliating against the whistleblower, with numerous government agencies enforcing the protections.
For instance, the U.S. Department of Labor (or DOL) and the agency’s divisions impose several major laws that will defend whistleblowers or have requirements in place to protect employees from a company’s retaliation that report law violations, that refuse to take part of any illegal actions or participate in any proceedings.
The DOL enforces the Corporate and Criminal Fraud Accountability Act, which protects publicly-traded corporation employees from retaliation for the reporting of alleged rule violations of the Securities and Exchange Commission or any federal law provision that relates to fraud against stockholders.
This momentous Act makes it a crime for employers to retaliate against their employees and demands that publicly traded corporates design procedures for inside whistleblowing. It also demands lawyers to be inside whistleblowers.
Federal discrimination also provides protection to whistleblowers. For instance, if you see a prohibited discrimination occur against an employee and you make the report to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the employer is not permitted to take revenge out on you for it. Should the company strike back you can file a discrimination suit with the EEOC, preserving your right to file a lawsuit against the employer.
Any person who sees a corporation doing something wrong has the right to file a complaint and launch a lawsuit so the party can be held accountable for the actions it has taken. Most times, a whistleblower will get a percentage of the funds from a lawsuit settlement and federal laws are designed to protect the whistleblowers from excessive vengeance like wrongful termination.
The Whistleblower Protection Act is designed to shield federal government whistleblowers, with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (or the OSC) enforcing the protection.
The Military Whistleblower Protection Act is designed to protect the military whistleblowers and is overseen by the Inspector General of the Department of Defense.
The federal whistleblower laws instruct the minimums that every state must abide by. States have the right to make their own laws regarding whistleblowers or expand upon or include the federal laws’ minimums.
You can learn what your state’s whistleblower laws are by checking with the department of labor in your state.
Of course, before you decide to become a whistleblower, it’s best to get a lawyer’s advice to ensure that you are protected under some type of law.