If I were to go to the press about anything, I'd get fired. (Fine. That makes sense.) But I'd really like to go to the state and say that giving the organization extra money for risk assessment without mandating higher staffing levels for direct-care workers leaves group home staff in unsafe working conditions. I won't do it, but I want to.
If I were to go to the press about anything, I'd get fired.
There are such things as whistleblower protections. Whether, in your jurisdiction, they apply to you, exist, and are enforced is worth researching.
I thought you worked for some arm of the government. If you do, you should be able to call everyone in management above you, individually, a pigfucker on the front page of the Boston Globe without getting fired.
What you say at work could get you in trouble, but for government employees, off the job you're perfectly safe. (Barring things like confidentiality violations, and I've never really understood how being in the military affects your constitutional rights.)
I wish that I worked for the government. We get paid by the government, but we're human services vendors.
In other words, they contract the work out to avoid having to pay good benefits, provide pensions and deal with unions.
Whistleblower protections are a thoroughly inadequate substitute for having a job. E.g., you might be able to win some poriton of your backpay two years from now (less attorney fees), but that won't pay next month's rent. The only sensible course is to keep quiet. If it's really bad, look for anothe job and turn them in after you've found it.
BG, is the problem that it would be hard to say anything without violating a client's right to privacy. I suspect that you have bigger issues there than most.
Not really, no. Saying that there should not be single staffing overnight in a 24-hour facility given that so many of our people have serious medical issues in addition to psych ones or that the level of CPR training is inadequate or that our back-up on-call system is atrocious and people don't always respond. I don't think that that's a privacy issue. It's just directly attacking the management of my organization and most of the other human services organizations.
The only person who is authorized to speak to the press is our executive director. The word about the substandard housing already got out in a NY Times article anyway,and nobody has done anything about that.
6: I'm looking for another job anyway. (Anybody know anyone doing health research who needs and RA to do screening and help prepare papers for publication?) I just worry that if I were a known whistleblower, another organization would be afraid to hire me.
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What you say at work could get you in trouble, but for government employees, off the job you're perfectly safe. ...
Tell that to Joseph Locurto
Yes, I mean in MA. I'm sure that PA is nice, but I have a BF, friends and established medical providers here. There happen to be a number of jobs at the hospitals right now, but getting through those online HR things is a bitch.
12: That link is broken but this one tells me Locurto was a cop who wore blackface in a parade.
A cop in a parade isn't "off the job".
13: I thought so, but figured I would check.
14.2: That's got to be the reasoning of the appellate court opinion, which I haven't read, but even that is a close call.
14: Wore black face in the service of celebrating the murder of a black man. I mean, he was reenacting the murder of Byrd? For a parade float?
Oh wait. He wasn't the one doing that particular thing. He was in blackface on the same float, though? This parade sounds awesome.
A cop in a parade isn't "off the job".
AFAICT they were all off the clock and not in uniform. But there's usually internal policies about "conduct unbecoming" and such.
He was in blackface on the same float, though? This parade sounds awesome.
No doubt. I'm generally not a fan of employers being able to fuck with you for stuff that happens off the clock but christ I sure wish the people involved weren't so repellent.
I'd have to read the opinion, but if I were going to justify it, it'd have to be something like "A cop, particularly, is never 'off the job' for the purposes of scaring or horrifying the people of the community they police, because it's an important aspect of the job to appear trustworthy to the populace." But a non-cop public employee probably shouldn't have been fired for the same reason.
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... But a non-cop public employee probably shouldn't have been fired for the same reason.
Maybe not but firefighters Jonathan Walters and Robert Steiner were also fired and their firing was also upheld on appeal. In any case it seems clear that public employees are not in fact "perfectly safe" from retaliation for off job activity.