In light of the call from Whistleblowers Australia for legislation providing greater protection for those who make public interest disclosures, I’m curious.
How many people here have experience of being on either end of a whistleblowing scandal? Have you had workmates who were hounded because they spoke up? Have you felt unjustly accused by anonymous revelations? Did “your” whistleblowing incident lead, in the end, to effective changes in favour of the public interest? Or are the unsafe/exploitative/corrupt practises still ongoing?
Feel free to use a different pseudonym than your usual for this discussion.
***hears sound of crickets chirping***
I reckon the lack of people prepared to comment, even pseudonymously, says something in itself.
Oh, I dunno Robert: only time i saw a whistleblower get into trouble, was the bloke who was set upon by angry parents. He was umpiring an Under-10s game I think
Seriously, maybe we don’t move in whistleblowing circles. Or the blowers bloody well hide their light under several bushels? They don’t tell their friends ‘cos they fear reprisals?
I’m acquainted with a couple of whistleblowers through intersecting social circles. They’re probably members of Whistleblowers Australia judging by some half-remembered conversations. They certainly seemed to have found the experience traumatising, and I’m pretty sure that they hadn’t always been such cynics. I don’t know much of their specifics though.
From a blowers perspective – there is a reason most people ignore/put up with lies and injustice in organisations, calling out gross misconduct usually ends up with the blower more marginalised and the blowee to rise up the ranks or transfer to a better position in another organisation.
It is cultural – being an ex-banana bender and now Victorian I feel that the southern state is more difficult to blowers, the ‘dont make waves’ and old school ties culture is more prevalent here. Aussies hate dobbers and despite our image of rebellious scamps the truth is that we are a mob of dogs who are happy to roll over at the merest command from our betters.
Initially I was astounded at the viscousness and willful ignoring of the issues I raised in the organisation I was blowing within – what was more shocking was the response of the wider industry and peers. The large percentage were of the opinion ‘well, what did you expect?’ and a tiny minority actually had a sense of justice and responded with disgust. For most I was just a troublemaker and how dare I question a venerable organisation.
Emotionally exhausted I conducted a little experiment and let the incident into the wild – I wrote it up on the web and sent the link to a wide circle of friends. I did as much as I could and decided to leave it out there in case anyone else with more clout/sterner stuff would take it up. Nada. Zip.
The incident led to the ending of ten years of my own work and had a large part in our family moving to another town. I’m lucky as these changes have ultimately led to better life for us – I can imagine the outcome would most likely be very different for other whistleblowers.
For a bit of context it was an arts organisation that was up to no good – there is more scope for unaccountable bastardry in the arts due to a huge pool of hopefuls queing up and and higher up positions being occupied by those with a disconnect to the actual makers. (Though I guess this could be said for a lot of fields – the arts, not being always (heh) about the bottom line has more scope for justifying egos and pettiness).
So … no … my incident, not for want of trying, did not lead to effective changes in the public interest. Nothing changed, no accountability. Bury the informants, promote the bastards. Public perception of shiny happiness maintained.
based in South Melbourne?
I’ve addressed problems with great success when the problems were NOT due to actions/inactions of those at the top… as long as the folk at the top can thump the table at someone else, things get done.
Even whistleblowing on a specific instance of something is probably easy.
The problems come when you are addressing something more systemic caused by collective avoidance of responsibility rather than commission of specific acts, and also when public awareness of the problem might cause as much of a problem as the one you are trying to address. System problems can be root causes of many consequential problems, so it’s easy for those “minding” you to sidetrack you down into one particular subissue. If you cannot get something onto the risk register, then you are in for a traumatic experience.
In my case, problems were systemic because necessary and moderately costly activities were avoided: chains of senior managers who stayed for 2 years could cut spending and then get out before problems arose. A few of us tried to point out the problems: we got told the problems were trivial for years (never mind that board minutes talked of “significant legal liability” for at least one of them). We were told new senior managers would work to improve things…. naa, just delays.
I tried fixing things up from the inside for years, and started yelling “let me get this on the risk register, then these 9-figure problems are off my desk and I can get on with my job”. No luck. “They” tried to pacify me with “it’s in the works program”.
I was traumatized severely… severe depression. Though working in IT, I was phobic about sitting in front of screens… had to desensitize myself by doing things that were entirely non-technical, like playing solitaire. It made other chronic conditions much worse. Unable to work for a couple of years.
Yes, it hurt, and I’m permanently scarred. But that’s ok. I’d have no respect for myself if I hadn’t fought the good fight, and self-respect is important. And I knew I wasn’t nuts when, after about 60 minutes talking with a senator, he turned and asked me what time in the following week suited ME for a few hours. Mind you, even he was stymied in Senate Estimates because the government guillotined his question time, and the folk who’d been giving me grief knew what was coming, and ummmed-aaaah-I’ll_take_that_on_advisement until time was up.
If I was advising anyone else how to go about things, I’d say go straight for the risk register and verify your concerns are recorded. If they are, the problem is off your desk and SOMEONE has the responsibility to manage it. If you are blocked from putting things in the risk register, or someone “puts the words in your mouth” that soften the nature of the problem as it is recorded, then go straight to the ombudsman.
I figured that all out too late. But, as I said, at least I can look at myself in the mirror.
I work in an organisation where a whistleblower exposed a fraud that cost the organisation over $1 mill. She was so ignored, treated with contempt and geenrally passed over in the subsequent 2 years that she left and is happily working somewhere else. However, I think her experience will give her the message that most organisations prefer to lose money than to have their bad practices or poor management exposed. I doubt that she would ever do the same again, however blatant the fraud.
Well, here’s a whistle blowing story that is happening right now.
I am a member of a bushfire brigade. We train for and a big deal is made of training for urban fringe incidents. e.g. a house fire on acreage property. We are well set up for bush fires but not for entering a burning building so our role might be keeping up a water supply or stopping a fire spreading.
Last week there was a fire at the local caravan park and a man died when trapped in a demountable home. Our fire station is approximately 100 metres from the caravan park and the urban fire brigades attended but we were not notified.
Whether or not we could have saved the poor bugger is debatable, but if we aren’t called we certainly can’t. Naturally people at the caravan park and members of the Brigade are pretty angry about this whole thing.
There seemed to be little interest from the bureaucrats or the coroner so there is only one other way to get something like this moving, the media. A brief story was run last Saturday.
Needless to say a lot of people are rushing to protect their career paths at the moment.
Not sure if it is because of the ruckus being kicked up, but just yesterday we were called to attend a shed fire as close to our station as the caravan park. As you can imagine this did not go down well with caravan park residents who put it succinctly – “is a shed more important than a man’s life?”.
Our intention is to change the protocol inside a fire service, likely one of the most rigid institutions there is. We may (hopefully) never experience the benefit of any change (if there is not another similar incident) but maybe, just maybe, it will save a life somewhere else.
As far as I am concerned whistle blowing is an absolutely legitimate strategy for forcing change if the “proper” methods don’t work.
I’ve seen people with a grudge and vested interest pose as whistleblowers to try derail the career of a senior manager. There should be an independent system by which people can raise concerns in a workplace or organisation without fear of retribution. At the same time there need to be a ‘right of reply’ and safeguards against vexatious claims and abuse of the system by those whose interests are threatened.
Whistleblowing sure.
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I’m still on the run.
Bandaid says: “I’ve seen people with a grudge and vested interest pose as whistleblowers to try derail the career of a senior manager.”
Never let it be said that LP doesn’t reflect the latest management crapola. There is a whole industry and literature now geared to churning out the line that whisteblowers are envious underachievers who deliberately target successful managers. Except there has never been a case that has shown this to have occurred and everyone knows it is desperate self-serving bullshit.
Sorry, folks, but I’ve changed my moniker for this post.
I got done-over some years ago for trying to stop outsourcing of prosecution work by a State Government Dept. I was then working for as a lawyer.
It was at the height of the Private Good-Public Bad outsourcing boom of the late ’80s and early ’90’s and outsourcing was definitely flavour of the month.
It didn’t seem appropriate to me to be outsourcing legal work of this nature, especially when the Dept. itself had been doing a pretty decent job of it in-house.
So I fought it tooth and nail. Caught them telling a few porkies about costs/benefits and the like and generally stirred-up the troops for a bit of industrial argy-bargy.
Anyhow, The-Powers-That-Be decided I had to go and a suitable excuse was found. I ended-up with a nice little redundancy too, thank you very much.
After that, my career just took-off in a different direction, so things worked-out OK for me in the end, although I’m still on the Depatrment’s shit-list with a “never to be briefed” bullet.
They outsourced the work anyway and now the volume of successful prosecutions is down by about 80% on what it had been in-house. I bet it costs them a shit load more, too.
As for the Thatcherite Apparitchik who was responsible for implementing The Grand Plan and who gave me the boot, what can I say?
She ended-up disgraced and forced-out after an independent enquiry later discovered some (how shall I say it?) “inexplicable irregularities” in the tendering processes by which some of her (ahem), mates, had received contracts.
How do I know this?
The person who did the independent enquiry is a lawyer friend of mine.
Yep, things certainly have a way of getting around on the old Jungle Telegraph.
Ditto an emerging literature that suggests that bullying is really just “personality conflict” or uppity underlings over-reacting to “performance management”. I’m sure this kind of thing does happen from time to time, but the effect (intentional or otherwise) of this stuff seems to be to call into question the integrity of anyone who blows the whistle or reports being bullied.
I recall a conversation with a fellow Queensland Green who made an interesting point in relation to managements seeking to have whistleblowers and other internal dissidents medically retired on mental health grounds. This was that the experience of working in an environment which would be bad enough to warrant whistleblowing, the stress of taking on such a role, and the subsequent retaliatory measures by management, would all synergise to make a person genuinely psychiatrically unwell. Indeed, such an outcome (“certified” by a medical practitioner on a retainer to do the management’s medical dirty work) would often be the aim of management’s responses.
I recall a conversation with a fellow Queensland Green who made an interesting point in relation to managements seeking to have whistleblowers and other internal dissidents medically retired on mental health grounds.
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Interesting strategy. Did they learn that one from the KGB?
Medical grounds as a pretext? There’s certainly stress and its consequences for the whistleblower (or even those who are merely trying to raise awareness of the issues so they can be tidied in house). What was interesting in my case was the difference between my GP, neurologist, and psychiatrist (a specialist in psych of those with other neurological – disorders), who all agreed that I had "loads" of insight (the ability to perceive what was going on in my head), whereas the doctors hired by the placed I worked for were pushing for the company line that I had no insight (i.e. I was psychotic).
It would be interesting to know the typical range of times between somebody discovering the problem, suggesting a remedy internally, and the time (under considerable pressure from mgmt) before they finally crack the sh*ts and spill their guts outside the organization concerned. The longer this is, the harder it is to look for future employment because you won’t exactly get a glowing reference from your most recent employer over the past few years.
Of course, there are lots of different ways managers can hassle an ethical employee: it’s a chance to join together against a little guy, using the skills they’ve previously used stabbing each other in the back!
Tigtog and all:
Whistleblowing is not limited to trying to stop only obviously criminal activity …. it is the duty of a citizen, too, where serious harm is being done or is likely to be done to the general public- even if the harm is being done quite lawfully.
You might find useful this quote from a review of the book by C.Fred Alford: WHISTLEBLOWERS Broken Lives and Organizational Power. 2002. Cornell Uni Press.
Anyway, the scandal that we exposed had a far better outcome than than did Blowfly’s [4, above] even if all those who did so were punished, vilified and ostracized …. eventually, safety standards for the general public and for operators were markedly improved.
Tigtog, you asked if any of us
Take a look at what happened to all those who were directly involved in exposing the misused of contaminated chemical agents, such as Agent Orange, in the Viet-Nam War and also in forestry and in rural industries back here in Australia.
Not a single one of those directly involved in exposing that scandal had a successful career after that – and at least one was driven to commit suicide.
In stark contrast, everyone involved in covering-up and in hindering the exposure of that scandal was promoted, praised or rewarded in some other way – especially those renegade returned servicemen who betrayed their fellow war veterans and their families.
Although all those who blew the whistle on the dangers of misused chemical agents were punished [often indirectly, always viciously] for doing having done so …. the good news is that eventually Australia did develop fairly high standards for the use of chemical agents in the enviroment and for the safe disposal of residues [for example, we now have Drum Muster for empty chemical drums in rural areas]. Pity that was achieved at such a terrible price though ….
Whistleblower laws like a lot of laws relating to the workplace and the ostensible protection of workers – most workers – are a pipedream at best, a con at worst, as Brian Martin explains here.
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UTSLRev/2003/8.html
Workplaces are madhouses in most instances and the only real protection dissident workers will ever have lies in their ability to get significant numbers of others to stand up, speak out and be naysayers at the same time. Failing this, the system will always effortlessly crush individual whistleblowers.