A whistleblower is one who exposes wrongdoing in their workplace. Things don’t usually go well for whistleblowers. They get branded as “troublemakers” by their employers, or worse. Canadian Duncan Edwards reported a strip club breach of security by his Defence Minister employer and was fired for his diligence. Iranian doctor Ramin Pourandarjani died of “salad poisoning” shortly after reporting the use of torture against political prisoners by his government. Christoph Meili, the bank guard who reported the destruction of Holocaust victim’s savings records by UBS bank, had to be given political asylum in the United States after Swiss authorities attempted to arrest him. Being a whistleblower is not an easy decision to make.
Even if I thought that our printers killed baby seals, I would not be a whistleblower. The Bernards, for generations, have silenced whistleblowers. It’s how we made all our money.
Quotation from television character Andy Bernard on The Office
It was a crisis of conscience. I had to be cognizant of what could happen to my family as well as to me. I was confident I wouldn’t be able to get a job in a corporation again, certainly not in the insurance industry.
Quotation from Wendell Potter, former executive at Cigna
P.S. My heart goes out to the people of Japan in the wake of this week’s earthquake, tsunami and nuclear melt-down. Don’t give up!
You’ve described perfectly the reasons why truth is rarely told – conspiracies of constraint in the service of power. All of those who reported the flaws in the GE Mark I reactor design were effectively silenced more than 40 years ago. Nature can be quite dangerous enough without our compounding its effects.
All I can do is share your heartfelt good wishes to the people of Japan where they should have been celebrating cherry blossom time.
Whistle-blowers are often so necessary in our world and society these days. Without them – there would be no change. Love how you’ve thought of and presented this.
Don’t forget the poor bugger suspected of supplying Wikileaks with all that classified information. Shut in a hole for showing that the government et al speaks with a forked tongue. No WYSIWYG for the eh.
Oh for an editor. That should of course be ‘them eh’
I can easily see why being a whistleblower puts people in an uncomfortable and dangerous position. Being fired seems to price to pay for telling the truth… unbelievable!
oh sera baby i’m too tired, been up all night again while hubby prepared for the meeting today to see if he would get his job back, we’ll see, he says it went well… *clonk heads hits these keys and enter* yay hubby the whistleblower lololol
Couldn’t even nap, just dozed, got a friend from out of town coming over tonight, you can’t join the commonwealth, arnie hates canada, coz we make cheap movies for them and steal their overpriced work
Isn’t it odd that the power of the earthquake and the tsunami get overshadowed by the idiocy of building those evil power plants where water can destroy them?
man oh man you are the voice of reason STAND UP and be counted, but you’ll be alone lol you crack me up!
What a coincidence ! I spent friday afternoon pushing my best friend to go to HR because her coworkers said a lot of horrible bad things about the tsunami, like “they deserved it after all the whale they’ve been eating…” Such a lack of sensibility must be punished imho… But she fears the consequences…
noooooo you HAVE to keep your fingers and toes crossed while it goes thru ‘legal’ lololol jk, you may uncross … not sure when we will know about what happened at that meeting, soon i hope, i think they are in no hurry coz hubby has to go thru a month of physiotherapy before he goes back anyway.. you’re a sweety, sweety
i know right, monster truck porn lolol that was the idea, i think only two of you noticed the title tho lol i just got out of bed, so nice to cross paths with you first thing in the day
Generally speaking existing provisions in relation to the law and various governing authorities provide the necessary avenues before one needs to revert as a last resort to whistle blowing.
The need to beef up whistle blowing protection is to acknowledge a failed administration and lack of regulatory control. In the more extreme examples it is a representation of widespread endemic corruption and systemic failure. In those extreme cases whistleblowers options are severely curtailed even if the provisions exist.
But in regard to pharmaceutics and many other industries not least of which is the financial services sector in the USA the regulatory controls were systematically watered down under the guise of the misguided theory to much regulation stifles growth.
Whisteblowibg provisions address the symptoms not the causes.
Best wishes
My heart also goes out to the people of Japan during this unimaginable tragedy, Sera.
LMAO @ “You’re welcome.” Hot Pockets can be nasty.
Hot pockets ARE nasty. Reminds me of an IT director at a company I used to work with. The company was big on security, and had cameras in all the hallways. One day the director’s chicken was removed from the fridge, eaten, and the tupperware container was put back in the fridge. He blew up, made sure everybody was aware of the issue, and got the security folks to look through the video to see if the culprit could be found. Of course, the culprit knew about the cameras so didn’t go walking out into the hallway with the chicken in the tupperware, and was never found. Funny thing is everybody BUT the dev director knew who ate the chicken, but his blowing up and insistence on reviewing the video pretty much insured there was no whistle-blower in this situation. Funny.
It makes me wonder what I would do in a similar situation, Sera. I sure hope I’d do ‘the right thing.’