Why is whistleblowing protection important?

You enjoy protection if you report your employer for safety or legal violation. This protection comes from laws designed to encourage people to help the government make workplaces safer and stop corporate corruption.

According to NPR, whistleblowing protections came about because of a need for insider information to stop illegal or dangerous practices. Essentially, authorities cannot be everywhere, nor can they catch every bad thing that occurs in all workplaces. They needed help, and by protecting those who come forward, they have a network of people working to help catch wrongdoing.

The importance of protection

Whistleblower protection under the law became clearly important when people in the past would report employers for doing something wrong and immediately face backlash from those companies. Out of fear of losing their jobs or facing other punishments, people would keep quiet instead of turning in employers.

Lawmakers decided to provide help and ensure that anyone who turned in an employer would not face any type of retaliation. That spawned whistleblower laws. Now, if an employer tries to fire or otherwise punish someone who makes a whistleblower report, it will face more punishment.

The importance of whistleblowing

Having protections in place has allowed countless people to come forward and expose issues in their workplace. Through safeguarding these people, the government has been able to uncover multiple schemes to defraud taxpayers and harm employees. These laws have likely saved lives and certainly saved a lot of money. In the end, whistleblower protection has done a lot of good and continues to help ensure the workforce can stand up for itself by having the right to report their employers’ bad deeds.