A whistleblower is a person, often an employee, who reveals information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent. Whistleblowers can use a variety of internal or external channels to communicate information or allegations. Over 83% of whistleblowers report internally to a supervisor, human resources, compliance, or a neutral third party within the company, hoping that the company will address and correct the issues. A whistleblower can also bring allegations to light by communicating with external entities, such as the media, government, or law enforcement. Whistleblowing can occur in either the private sector or the public sector.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is a large regulatory agency of the United States Department of Labor that originally had federal visitorial powers to inspect and examine workplaces. The United States Congress established the agency under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which President Richard M. Nixon signed into law on December 29, 1970. OSHA's mission is to "assure safe and healthy working conditions for working men and women by setting and enforcing standards and by providing training, outreach, education, and assistance." The agency is also charged with enforcing a variety of whistleblower statutes and regulations. OSHA's workplace safety inspections have been shown to reduce injury rates and injury costs without adverse effects on employment, sales, credit ratings, or firm survival.
Carol Martha Browner is an American lawyer, environmentalist, and businesswoman, who served as director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2011. Browner previously served as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during the Clinton administration from 1993 to 2001. She currently works as a Senior Counselor at Albright Stonebridge Group, a global business strategy firm.
The United States Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is a permanent independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency whose basic legislative authority comes from four federal statutes: the Civil Service Reform Act, the Whistleblower Protection Act, the Hatch Act, and the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA). OSC's primary mission is the safeguarding of the merit system in federal employment by protecting employees and applicants from prohibited personnel practices (PPPs), especially reprisal for "whistleblowing." The agency also operates a secure channel for federal whistleblower disclosures of violations of law, rule, or regulation; gross mismanagement; gross waste of funds; abuse of authority; and substantial and specific danger to public health and safety. In addition, OSC issues advice on the Hatch Act and enforces its restrictions on partisan political activity by government employees. Finally, OSC protects the civilian employment and reemployment rights of military service members under USERRA. OSC has around 140 staff, and the Special Counsel is an ex officio member of Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), an association of inspectors general charged with the regulation of good governance within the federal government.
The National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), founded in 2004 by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds in league with over 50 former and current United States government officials from more than a dozen agencies, is an independent, nonpartisan alliance of whistleblowers who have come forward to address weaknesses of US security agencies.
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is a sub-agency of the U.S. Department of Education that is primarily focused on enforcing civil rights laws prohibiting schools from engaging in discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, or membership in patriotic youth organizations.
The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) is an independent quasi-judicial agency established in 1979 to protect federal merit systems against partisan political and other prohibited personnel practices and to ensure adequate protection for federal employees against abuses by agency management.
The Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982 was a comprehensive transportation funding and policy act of the United States Federal Government, 96 Stat. 2097. The legislation was championed by the Reagan administration to address concerns about the surface transportation infrastructure. The Act contained Title V, known as the Highway Revenue Act of 1982, which added five cents to the per gallon gas tax, of which four cents was dedicated to restore interstate highways and bridges, and one cent for public transit. The Act also set a goal of 10 percent for participation of disadvantaged business enterprises in federal-aid projects.
Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto is a Washington, D.C.-based international whistleblower rights law firm specializing in anti-corruption and whistleblower law, representing whistleblowers who seek rewards, or who are facing employer retaliation, for reporting violations of the False Claims Act, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform, Sarbanes-Oxley Acts, Commodity and Security Exchange Acts and the IRS Whistleblower law.
The California Fair Employment and Housing Act of 1959, codified as Government Code §§12900 - 12996, is a California statute used to fight sexual harassment and other forms of unlawful discrimination in employment and housing, which was passed on September 18, 1959.
The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, 5 U.S.C. 2302(b)(8)-(9), Pub.L. 101-12 as amended, is a United States federal law that protects federal whistleblowers who work for the government and report the possible existence of an activity constituting a violation of law, rules, or regulations, or mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority or a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety. A federal agency violates the Whistleblower Protection Act if agency authorities take retaliatory personnel action against any employee or applicant because of disclosure of information by that employee or applicant.
Sexual orientation discrimination is discrimination based on sexual orientation and/or sexual behaviour.
Scott Bloch is an American attorney and former political appointee of President George W. Bush. Bloch served as United States Special Counsel from December 12, 2003, when Bush signed his appointment, filling out his five-year statutory term on December 11, 2008.
The Whistle blower Week is the name given to a series of events in Washington, D.C. meant to raise awareness about whistle blowing. There were two whistle blower weeks which took place in Washington in two different years.
The National Whistleblower Center (NWC) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, tax exempt, educational and advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1988 by the lawyers Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto, LLP. As of March 2019, John Kostyack is the executive director. Since its founding, the center has worked on whistleblower cases relating to environmental protection, nuclear safety, government and corporate accountability, and wildlife crime.
Marsha Coleman-Adebayo is an American former senior policy analyst for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Beginning in 1996, she filed complaints alleging that a company from the United States was mining vanadium in South Africa and harming the environment and human health. The EPA did not respond, and Coleman-Adebayo reported her concerns to other organizations. When the EPA subsequently did not promote Coleman-Adebayo at her request, she filed suit against the agency, alleging racial and gender discrimination. On August 18, 2000, a federal jury found EPA guilty of violating the civil rights of Coleman-Adebayo on the basis of race, sex, color and a hostile work environment, under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Her experience inspired passage of the Notification and Federal Employee Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002.
Thad McIntosh Guyer is an American civil rights lawyer with an international practice based in the State of Oregon.
A whistleblower is a person who exposes any kind of information or activity that is deemed illegal, unethical, or not correct within an organization that is either private or public. The Whistleblower Protection Act was made into federal law in the United States in 1989.
In law, wrongful dismissal, also called wrongful termination or wrongful discharge, is a situation in which an employee's contract of employment has been terminated by the employer, where the termination breaches one or more terms of the contract of employment, or a statute provision or rule in employment law. Laws governing wrongful dismissal vary according to the terms of the employment contract, as well as under the laws and public policies of the jurisdiction.
Ashley Gjøvik is an American program manager and activist who is known for her whistleblowing and labor complaints against Apple Inc. After she raised issues with the alleged mishandling of environmental concerns, employee privacy, harassment, and discrimination at Apple in 2021, she was terminated by the company for allegedly leaking confidential intellectual property, which Gjøvik denies, alleging her firing was retaliation for speaking out against the company.
