Helping Whistleblowers After Employers Retaliate

There are many laws that people in California must follow. When they do not follow these laws, they could be charged with crimes. This is true for businesses as well. There are many laws and regulations that they must follow as well. These could be laws regarding certain financial transactions, environmental laws, labor laws such as wage and hour laws and other laws. However, sometimes it can be difficult for the government to know when these laws are being broken.

The government agencies may need employees within the company to tell them when their employers are breaking these laws. When employees do this they are commonly referred to as whistleblowers. Not surprisingly, many companies will be upset if an employee turns them into the authorities though. These companies may then retaliate the employees for doing so. The retaliation can come in many different forms as well.

The most obvious form of retaliation is firing the employee. However, the employer may retaliate by demoting the employee or not promoting them. Employers may also give false negative performance reviews, decrease pay or certain benefits, cut the employee’s hours or deny them a previously promised pay increase. All of these forms of retaliation are also illegal though and the employees are protected against whistleblower retaliation from the employer.

Many employees in California are aware that their employer may be engaging in illegal activity. If they are aware of these and report the illegal activity to the appropriate authorities, their employers cannot do anything to stop them, but they may retaliate against them. If they do, the employee may be entitled to compensation. The type and amount of compensation depends on how the employer retaliated against the employee. At Hennig Ruiz we have handled many of these cases, For more information please visit our whistleblower retaliation page on our website.