Do you feel your civil rights have been violated under the whistleblowing act? Law Offices of Christopher Trainor & Associates can help protect and make sense of these laws and make them work in your favor. The term whistleblower derives from the practice of English bobbies who would blow their whistle when they noticed a crime being committed. A whistleblower is an employee, former employee, or member of an organization, particularly of a business or government agency, who reports misconduct to people or entities that have the power and presumed readiness to take remedial action. Commonly the misconduct is a violation of law, rule, regulation and/or a direct threat to public interest, such as fraud, health, safety violations, and corruption to mention a few.
It is illegal for employers to terminate or to retaliate against persons who report the illegal and/or fraudulent activities of their employers to authorities outside of the company. If you reported criminal or illegal activity, health and/or safety violations, financial stock fraud, misrepresentation and/or fraud, or violations of employees’ rights, federal and state whistleblower laws provide for this protection, which allows you to recover if you have been the victim of an adverse, unlawful or unfair employment action by your employer. Federal and state whistleblower laws require you to file a lawsuit within 90 days of the adverse action on your job so it’s important to contact Law Offices of Christopher Trainor & Associates immediately at 248-886-8650, 24 hours a day/7 days a week.
Michigan has two workplace whistleblower laws:
These two laws are similar in that both are intended to protect workers who “blow the whistle.”
Whistleblower protection laws have been around since the Lloyd-La Follette Act of 1912. More recent laws include the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Energy Reorganization Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. The patchwork of laws means that victims of retaliation need to be alert to the laws at issue to determine the deadlines and means for making proper complaints.
Any kind of transgression may prompt whistleblowing. The vast majority of cases are based on relatively minor misconduct. The most common type of whistleblowers are internal whistleblowers who report misconduct to another employee or superior within their company or agency. In contrast, external whistleblowers report misconduct to outside persons or entities. In these cases, depending on the severity and nature of the wrongdoing, whistleblowers may report the misconduct to lawyers, the media, law enforcement or watchdog agencies, or to other local, state, or federal agencies.
