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.

” …. have experience of being on either end of a whistleblowing scandal?”

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 ….

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.

“The conventional story — high-minded individual fights soulless organization, is persecuted, yet triumphs in the end — is seductive and pervasive. In speaking with whistleblowers and their families, lawyers, and therapists, Alford discovers that the reality of whistleblowing is grim. Few whistleblowers succeed in effecting change; even fewer are regarded as heroes or martyrs.” …. and …. “According to Alford, the organization as an institution is dedicated to the destruction of the moral individualist. Frequently, he claims, the organization succeeds, which means that the whistleblowers are broken, unable to reconcile their actions and beliefs,with the responses they receive from others. Alford argues that few whistleblowers recover from their experience, and that, even then, they live in a world very different from the one they knew before their confrontation with the organization.”

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.

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!

There is a whole industry and literature now geared to churning out the line that whisteblowers are envious underachievers who deliberately target successful managers.

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 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.

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.