ROBIN PAGGI: Protect employees from retaliation for reporting wrongdoing
| Friday, Apr 29 2011 12:00 PM
Last Updated Monday, May 02 2011 06:49 PM
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Robin Paggi
While conducting harassment training at a client's facility recently, I noticed a poster on the wall encouraging employees to call a whistle-blower hotline if they had concerns about the ethical conduct of members of management or their co-workers.
What prevents employees from simply talking to their supervisors when they have these kinds of concerns? The answer is simple -- the fear of being retaliated against, and for good reason. In its 2009 National Business Ethics Survey, the Ethics Resource Center reported on the types of retaliation experienced by employees who reported misconduct, which included being:
* Excluded from decisions and work activity (62%)
* Given the cold shoulder (60%)
* Verbally abused by managers (55%)
* Almost lost job (48%)
* Not given promotion or raise (43%)
* Verbally abused by other co-workers (42%)
* Relocated or reassigned (27%)
* Other forms of retaliation (20%)
* Demoted (18%)
* Physical harm to person or property (4%).
Perhaps it is because whistle-blowing puts employees at risk of retaliation that the Dodd-Frank Act was recently passed. In her article "Whistle-Blowers: Threat or Asset?" Dori Meinert explains that the law "significantly increases rewards and protections to those blowing the whistle on securities violations (which) affects publicly held companies and their private subsidiaries and affiliates."
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is scheduled to release regulations implementing the law this month. While this law might not affect your company, protecting employees from retaliation for complaining about any wrongdoing affects every employer.
According to HRhero.com, "Retaliation includes any adverse action taken against an employee for filing a complaint or supporting another employee's complaint under a variety of laws." For example, it is against the law for an employer or its agents to punish an employee for complaining that he has been harassed or discriminated against, paid unfairly, or subjected to unsafe working conditions. Employees have the statutory right to make complaints about their employer, and to participate in investigations and hearings of such complaints, which means it is illegal for their employer or its agents to "get back at them" for doing so.
Until recently, employees were lawfully protected from retaliation only for making complaints about the employer to governmental agencies. However, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that employees making oral complaints to their employer about wage and hour violations (i.e. being paid unfairly) are now also legally protected from being retaliated against.
What can employers do to help ensure complaining employees are not retaliated against and avoid retaliation lawsuits? Employment attorney Jay Rosenlieb suggests that employers have written policies (handbooks) that clearly state that retaliation is illegal and to especially send this message to supervisors. "In the event of a workplace investigation, make sure that the alleged perpetrator is told in writing that retaliation is illegal," adds Rosenlieb.
Tom Devine, legal director with the Government Accountability Project, says employers often view employees who make complaints "the same way that any animal views a threat." In order to avoid retaliation lawsuits, employers must protect those employees instead of threatening or harming them in return.
Robin Paggi is a Certified Human Resources Professional with KDG Human Resource Solutions, a division of the Klein, DeNatale, Goldner law firm. These are her opinions, not necessarily The Californian's.
