Throughout the years, California laws have granted employees multiple whistleblower protections when it comes to filing complaints for any reasonable violations of the estate’s employment laws. This year, a new law is added to this list of protections, and it is specifically designed to ensure that employees are safe from retaliation when filing complaints about any issues that an employer may have already known.
This departs from prior case law, in which, after recognizing a failure in openly disclosing what an employer considered “information is known to everyone”, the court failed in favor of an employee who was granted additional whistleblower protections to prevent any form of retaliation. This creates a precedent where employees can now initiate legal action in the event of reports or complaints of a violation made by an employer, even if the recipient already knows of the violation.
With this new protection now in effect. Employees may need to take into consideration the following practices in order to ensure a safe workspace for their employees:
Always keep up with any documentation on potential performance issues. Employers have the legal duty to keep track of these. If you try to report anything they have already informed workers of, you may face disciplinary actions, including legal charges of your own.
Make sure that you are up to date with all HR compliance training placed in your workplace. These will tell you what anti-retaliation policies are currently protecting you and will inform you of what the best steps are when facing any kind of retaliation.
The best defense against any kind of whistleblowing retaliation claim is to always make sure that your claims are backed by actual evidence. In this sense, any form of documentation of what you are reporting will be essential, so always make sure to keep all your information and testimonials up to date and properly organized.