The Department of Labor, charged with enforcing the federal law protecting corporate whistleblowers at publicly-traded companies, has been dismissing complaints on the technicality that workers at corporate subsidiaries aren’t covered.By the way, to read more about Moberly and to also read the linked article to the journal, click here (subscription required).
The government has ruled in favor of whistleblowers 17 times out of 1,273 complaints filed since 2002, according to department records. Another 841 cases have been dismissed. Many of the dismissals were made on the grounds that employees worked for a corporate subsidiary, says Richard Moberly, a University of Nebraska law professor. He studies issues involving workers who face retaliation from employers for reporting wrongdoing, and based his findings on department data. The rest of the cases are either pending, withdrawn, or settled.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who helped craft the whistleblower provision -- part of the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance act -- says the law was meant to cover workers in corporate subsidiaries. "Otherwise, a company that wants to do something shady, could just do it in their subsidiary," he said.
Continuing…
The dismissed cases include three whistleblower complaints against the German manufacturer Siemens AG and two against London media giant WPP Group PLC. The Labor Department rejected all five cases because the employees worked for subsidiaries, agency records show. Both companies declined to comment.As you can expect, though, this is par for the course for Chao’s Department of Labor (and the explanation for her nickname is provided here).
This tells us that she threw out the same whistleblower case three times (a National Parks Service employee raising concerns about asbestos in his workplace), this tells us that she threw out a case of an Air Midwest pilot who contended that he was demoted for reporting safety violations (memo to self: never fly Air Midwest), and this tells us about Princeton professor Adam Finkel, who filed suit against OSHA (under the DOL) to get the agency to test its workers for beryllium exposure and ended up getting canned (chronic beryllium disease is a fast-progressing, debilitating and potentially fatal lung disease).
Oh, and do I need to remind you about Chao’s opinion of the American workforce (here)?
Whenever I post about Elaine Chao, I usually end it with a call to fire her. I realize now, though, that that will never happen unless she resigns (and at this point, why should she?).
And in a way, I guess that’s a good thing. Seeing as how she remains the only member of Bushco still holding the post to which she was appointed upon Dubya’s installation by the Supreme Court in 2000, I can think of no other agency head who embodies the contempt for those whom she purports to represent (i.e., American workers), to say nothing of Bushco’s typically villainous conduct, better than she does.
On a wholly other note, I should point out that I still have issues with posting, to the point where I cannot reply to comments after they are approved and it is difficult to view posted content. I don’t know if this is still a Blogger issue or if the responsibility lies with my daytime service provider. However, I have no issues at my other location, and apparently there are also no issues with leaving comments otherwise – thanks for that (I'll reply later). If there are any updates, I’ll let you know.
2 comments:
And at the finish of mcbush's speech in which he threw bush and failed policies under the bus he walked into the audience and the dragon lady was the first hand he shook. Mindless.
He should probably get a flea bath, but that's his problem.
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