Item B: Whistleblower Protections

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ATTACHMENT A Summary of Whistleblower Laws October 20, 2008 Many federal laws include Whistleblower protections. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) administers the whistleblowing provisions of seventeen federal statutes through its Office of the Whistleblower Protection Program. The federal statutes generally protect employees from retaliation for reporting violations related to workplace safety and health, commercial motor carrier safety, pipeline safety, air carrier safety, nuclear safety, environmental degradation, Securities and Exchange Commission regulations and corporate fraud. If a retaliation complaint is filed with OSHA, OSHA conducts an investigation to determine whether the employee was retaliated against. OSHA will find retaliation if: 1) the employee engaged in protected activity; 2) the employer knew about the protected activity; 3) the employer took an adverse action; and 4) the protected activity was the motivating factor (or under some federal statutes, a contributing factor) in the decision to take adverse action against the employee. The State of Oregon has implemented a Whistleblower Law that offers protections for public employee whistleblowers. Oregon’s Whistleblower Law provides that it is an unlawful employment practice for a public employer to prohibit any employee from disclosing, or to take or threaten to take disciplinary action against an employee who discloses, information that the employee reasonably believes is evidence of: 1) a violation of any federal or state law, or rule or regulation promulgated by the state, an agency or a political subdivision; or 2) mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority or substantial and specific danger to public health and safety resulting from the action of the state, an agency or a political subdivision. It is also an unlawful employment practice to discourage, restrain, dissuade, coerce, prevent or otherwise interfere with the disclosures described above. The Civil Rights Division of the Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) has adopted administrative rules to implement the Whistleblower Laws. The rules provide that the Whistleblower Law does not restrict or preclude disciplinary action against an employee if the employee knows the information disclosed is false, if the employee discloses the information with reckless disregard for its truth or falsity, or if the information disclosed relates to the employee’s own violations, mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority or endangerment of public health or safety. The Whistleblower Law gives employees the right to file a retaliation complaint with BOLI or to file a civil lawsuit against the City. Staff did not find any local jurisdictions in Oregon that have adopted their own whistleblower ordinances. However, the City of Seattle has adopted a Whistleblower Protection Code. The protections provided by the Seattle Code are essentially the same as those provided under Oregon law, but the procedures mandated by the Seattle Code are somewhat different. The Seattle Code requires that, except in an emergency, a city employee report improper governmental action first to the appropriate city official. Oregon law allows an employee to disclose information related to improper government action to anyone, and prohibits the public