Protections For Whistleblowers In California

In the state of California, the government wants people to become whistleblowers if they see something that is out of line with the law. For example, the employees may work for companies that are breaking the law in some of their practices, or an employer may come directly to these employees and ask them to do something that they know is not legal.

In order to encourage whistleblowers to act without fear if they know that something is wrong, the state has set laws and regulations in place to protect them. This goes for all employees who work in either the public sector or the private sector. On top of that, these protections are extended to people who are employed by their county, their city or by the state itself.

The protections begin by ensuring that whistleblowers are free to act. An employer is never allowed to put a policy in place that prohibits the employees from acting in this fashion.

However, the law then goes on to address the problems that employees could face after they have acted. It starts by saying that it is unlawful for employers to practice retaliation when someone has exposed what their companies were doing. This means that employers cannot fire these employees or discriminate against them in terms of their position within the company or their eligibility for promotions.

It is incredibly important for any employees who have been thinking of reporting unlawful behavior at work to know both that they have the right to do so and that they are legally protected against any sort of retaliation.

Source: www.dir.ca.gov, “Whistleblowers Are Protected” Sep. 12, 2014