OSHA has recently revamped and reorganized its Whistleblowing Protection Program, signaling a heightened enforcement in protecting employees who report unsafe and hazardous working conditions. The Department of Labor called the restructuring a “significantly elevated priority status for whistleblower enforcement.”
For the construction industry, this means these types of complaints will be taken more seriously, inspected more thoroughly and enforced more often.
Protection from discrimination means that an employer cannot retaliate by taking “adverse action” against workers, such as:
- Firing or laying off
- Blacklisting
- Demoting
- Denying overtime or promotion
- Disciplining
- Denial of benefits
- Failure to hire or rehire
- Intimidation
- Making threats
- Reassignment affecting prospects for promotion
- Reducing pay or hours
Follow Best Practices to Avoid Whistleblowing Pitfalls
A thorough and open training program allows for the type of transparency that mitigates future conflicts between employees and employers. As part of this, employees should be aware of how and to whom to address safety concerns. Experts also recommend the following fundamental safety precautions to avoid whistleblowing consequences:
- Review health and safety programs. Safety programs should explicitly state that no punitive action will result from legitimate safety complaints.
- Comply with all OSHA recordkeeping requirements.
As an example of OSHA’s enforcement of wrongful termination policy, earlier this year a multi-national company was ordered to pay an apprentice electrician $225,000 in back wages and damages, remove disciplinary information from the employee’s personnel record and provide whistleblower rights information to all its employees.
Workers who feel they have been punished or discriminated against for voicing safety violations have to report to their OSHA Area Office within 30 days. If the evidence supports the employee’s allegation and a settlement cannot be reached, OSHA can issue an order requiring the employer to reinstate the employee, pay back wages and restore benefits.
Unsafe working conditions, faulty equipment or lack of training are just a few of the conditions employees can cite in an OSHA complaint. A number of laws protect employees from retaliation after reporting violations of environmental laws related to toxic substances, solid waste disposal, air quality and asbestos.
For more information, see OSHA’s Whistleblowing page.
