In the recent past, there have been several employees who have brought to light corrupt and unethical business practices on the part of their employer. Whistleblowers are known as internal and external individuals who disclose their firms’ illegal behavior. When faced with such an accusation, some companies have tried retaliating against the informer (Beatty 743). As a result of these cases, there are numerous laws that exist that protect employees from retaliation. Within this paper, the most significant whistleblowing protection statutes and acts will be discussed, as well as, important cases, and the ethics behind whistleblowing. Generally, the types of workplace retaliation that are enforced to protect against the treatment of whistleblowers …show more content…
v. United States Ex Rel. Escobar controversial case, respondents alleged that Universal Health had defrauded the Medicaid program, violating the False Claims Act (See 31 U.S.C. §3729 et seq.). United Health did this after requesting a reimbursement claim for services provided (Universal Health Services, Inc. v. United States Ex Rel. Escobar, 2016). They claimed that they provided specific services by a particular types of professionals, but they failed to disclose violations of regulations pertaining to the qualifications and licenses of staff members (Universal Health Services, Inc. v. United States Ex Rel. Escobar, 2016). Respondents filed a Qui Tam suit, after a teenage beneficiary at a Massachusetts’ Medicaid program had died from a seizure (Universal Health Services, Inc. v. United States Ex Rel. Escobar, 2016). The young girl had been diagnosed, by an unlicensed staff member, with bipolar disorder thus triggering her death by the adverse effects from the medicine she was prescribed. The respondents wanted Universal Health liable under the Implied False Certification Theory of Liability (Universal Health Services, Inc. v. United States Ex Rel. Escobar, 2016). This IFC theory is a legal doctrine, that treats payment requests as an implied certification that the claimant was within compliance of regulations, material contract conditions, and relevant statutes. The doctrine ultimately treats failure to disclose a violation as …show more content…
City of New York, Harman spoke out on national television "the workers who are considered the best workers are the ones who seem to be able to move cases out quickly"; and (2) "there are lots of fatalities the press doesn't know anything about."(Harman v. City of New York, 1996). These statements were in regards to the city’s welfare agency not adequately protecting children from egregious abuse. The city suspended her without pay for thirty days so she sued. The court ultimately ruled that the government holds the right to prohibit some employee speech unless it is a matter of public concern (Beatty
Instead of offering amnesty to whistleblowers for a limited time, we must implement this rule on a permanent basis, and let it be known that it is necessary to report suspicious behavior if noticed without any consequence. The permanent implementation will keep all the employees honest with each other and the company thus minimizing the chance of corruption.
The corporate world has been rocked by scandals occurring in well-known companies such as Enron and WorldCom. These blatant examples of fraudulent financial reporting and related corporate corruption created the necessity for more stringent and comprehensive laws and punishments to avoid such corporate scandals in the future. On July 30, 2002 President Bush signed into law the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The law was enacted to bolster public confidence in our nation’s capital markets. It imposes new reporting requirements and significant penalties for non-compliance on public companies and their executives, directors, attorneys, auditors and securities analysts. In my opinion, one of the significant provisions of the Act, that covers companies registered under section 12 of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, provides federal protection for “whistleblowers”. The Act requires that companies covered in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act should encourage employees to come forward and provide management with information regarding potential corporate fraud. It also specifically prohibits employers from retaliating against employees who provide such information. This Act was passed as a result of Enron’s attempted retaliation against Sherry Watkins who blew the whistle on the company. It’s purpose seems to be to enable ethical employees help keep management abreast of unsavory activities that will in the long run not only harm employees, stockholders and other stakeholders, but as past experience has shown will often lead to the demise of the company.
In the same study “quantitative and qualitative analyses are conducted of 33 cases of internal and external whistleblowers wrongfully fired for reporting wrongdoing” found that “The choice of internal versus external channels may vary depending on the employee's level of education, training, or skills (Terry).” They found “highly skilled or educated employees likely rely on internal reporting channels, while less educated employees often select external channels (Miceli and Near, 1992, 1984) (Terry).” Also “highly educated or skilled employees often have greater knowledge of where to report wrongdoing, including possible alternative reporting channels within
Whistleblowing is extremely risky business, not just within the United Nations but in any place where governments and corporations have something to hide. It can also cause deep anguish to the whistleblower. In his book called Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power, C. Fred Alford, a Professor of Government at the University of Maryland, College Park, provides a chilling and deeply pessimistic account of whistleblowers who have exposed corruption in high places.
On November 29th, Mary Inman gave us a talk on the topic whistleblowing, which let me know more about the whistleblower activities and the whistleblower protection. According to the definition given by the website whistleblowers international, whistleblowing is someone who reveal the unethical or illegal activities within the company. The person can be current or past employee, or an outside individual who is familiar with the unethical activity. This whistleblower does not need to be U.S. citizen.
Sadly my organizations overlook efforts by whistleblowers to put attention about misconduct occurring inside the organization. The system needs more whistleblowers because those in positions of power are usually skillful at hiding corruption from the public. People with honesty and a desire for truth and justice are our biggest hope for bringing information to this
Which allows employees that have observed any illegal acts or acts that raise concern to be able to report to a company hotline that allows that individual to report with the secrecy of the act without fear of retaliation from the company. Generally, whistleblowers are employees that are dedicated to the company and is a model employee. They do not have any intentions of hurting the company, but rather to improve the company. By having an anonymous reporting method of any situations allows employees to feel that the company values their opinions and actually care what is happening within the company. Another reason that this is a plus is because this keeps everybody honest, since there is an open door policy of reporting any illegal acts. The best way to implement this protocol is to educate employees on what the purpose of the program is. Then train the employees on the simple reporting procedures and certify that everything is clearly written and efficiently understood. When the complaint has reported an Ombudsperson or manager will report the matter to upper management to conduct an internal investigation. When all is done and the complaint is true, then actions will be done to correct the problems. In this case of the secretary being fired for refusal to prepare false expense reports for her boss, there is no need for her to be terminated instead this allows the creation of the whistle-blowing hotline for the company to investigate any illegal acts within the
Whistleblowing is the deed, usually done by an employee of a company, of drawing concern or creating awareness of unethical or illegal behaviour within the corporation to a higher authority or to the public. Whistleblowing can take place internally or externally. Internal whistleblowing is when an employee bypasses an immediate supervisor and reports the issue to a superior level of administration. This type of whistleblowing is kept within the firm whereas external whistleblowing occurs when an employee exposes the wrongdoings of a company to external sources such as the press or law enforcements. There is also a distinction between acknowledged and anonymous whistleblowing. Anonymous whistle-blowing occurs when the whistleblower keeps their identity concealed to protect themselves and their relatives from the consequences put on by the company while acknowledged whistleblowers are willing to withstand the accusations of disloyalty along with the consequences brought on by the company by putting their name behind their deed of whistleblowing.
Whistleblowing is the term applied to the reporting by employees of illegal, immoral, or illegitimate practices under the control of their employers to parties who can take corrective action (Elliston 1985). All directors, officials and employees have the responsibility to notify any
Whistleblowers are often viewed as heroes of the business world, due to the exposure to the public of unethical practices within companies. While whistleblowing has a bad reputation, it is often encouraged in the work place, due to its benefits. These benefits include, fraud detection, workplace safety, and protecting the workforce as a whole. Along with that, whistleblowing stands as early detections of fraud, or misconduct, within a company, therefor causing an early investigation before these unethical practices spread.
Whistleblowing is one of the most delicate constructs of our society, contradicting in ardor and antipathy. Though it has no clear definition regarding morality, it is most basically defined as a person who provides information on an illegal, immoral, or harmful activity being performed by an organization or government. Whistleblowing can fall anywhere from heroic to the highest federal crime in America. Though many laws, dating back to 1777, have been put in place to protect whistleblowers, many have their jobs taken away, personal lives destroyed, and have even gone to prison. The cause of such hypocrisy could be the highly subjective nature of the deed. Whistleblowing is an action that is hard to delineate as crime or benevolence due to
“Whistle blowing is a disclosure by an employee or professional of confidential information which relates to some danger, fraud or other illegal or unethical conduct connected with the work place, be it of the employer or his fellow employees.” Based on the facts read, Delectables Corp. is participating in serious unethical behavior that in the long term can hurt both the company and its customers. Before deciding how best to proceed questions such as these come to mind: “Am I blowing the whistle for the right reasons? Am I ready to be known as a whistleblower? Am I prepared to live with the consequences?” I would think through my decision by weighing the pros and cons of whistle blowing. There are numerous risks associated with this decision.
The answer is quite complex, because some would argue that it is a lengthy process just to get to the bottom of these allegations since both parties could and would probably sue each other, it’s expensive as well. As mentioned above, the whistleblower in question can have his reputation ruined if these allegations turned out to be false or even worse he may cause publicity and this can result in the layoff of workers in the company as well as him not having a job in the future so at the end, it will all be a mess with both sides losing. This may sound like an argument that is deemed intimating but people are still willing to try and success into making a better environment for future employees and even with laws and procedures in place, whistleblowers, especially in the US are being treated poorly because who would want to be “disloyal” and “irresponsible” at a company especially multinational ones and this causes a confusion for upcoming whistleblowers to decide whether it’s worth it or not. (Ettorre) In terms of Kantian theorists, they suggest that people would act in harmony with all the universally accepted rules such as telling the truth which is
Working in any environment, some people are subject to see things that may be illegal or unethical. In any situation like this, how do you determine the best decision, whether to keep quiet or speak out? According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, a whistle-blower is one who reveals something, converts or informs against another person’s transgression in the workplace. In 1989, the United States passed the Whistleblower Protection Act. This act protects federal employees in the workplace if they report any misconduct or wrongdoing. Whistle-blowing is becoming more universal, however is it really worth the whistle-blowers risk and integrity? I will attempt to analyze key facts regarding
public servants. For some, this action is perceived positively because it promotes the public good