What do they think they are doing?

The most common way in UK is- sending the information about the malpractice to the organization, and there the case is investigated (in most cases it is performed by such bodies as Health and Safety Executive, the Financial Service Authority, the Inland Revenue in Britain), then, in serious cases the investigation is passed over to the police and the media. The UK Public Interest Disclosure act grants safety for the whistleblowers, so do many of the organisations, the slogan is «don't let the bastards grind you down».But the reality is a bit different.

In his heading, summarizing the thousands of pages of whistleblowers' literature and the results of whistleblowers' activity, Nick Perry mentioned that, though these people proclaim «those arguments concerning individual rights, the claims of conscience, the responsibilities of citizens, and the emancipatory power of reason», the fate of whistleblowers is characteristically bleak in that if they have not already decided to resign they can expect to be dismissed from their employment. Numeral examples have proven it; in most cases only one of the five whistleblowers managed to avoid getting sacked. Being blackmailed, arrested, referred for psychiatric evaluation (with its results defined beforehand, off course) is yet not the full list of a whistleblower’s risks, generously created mostly by private sector employers. The journalist also mentions the necessarity of social control in the governmental organizations. «White collar crimes» are rarely being investigated, and, though whistleblowing is partially protected by the law in the US, for example, but anyone can understand that the especial level of inviolability of the «white collared» enables them to penalize «whistleblowers». Nick Perry makes a negative remark on most of the whistleblowers' literature: «at the level of textual organization, these whistleblowing studies tend to replicate, rather than interrogate, the kind of difficulties which whistleblowers find themselves confronted with at the level of social practice.». Expediency is what he calls such works; «for although 'is' and 'ought' may formally remain stubbornly separate, would-be whistleblowers are, in effect, cautioned against going public by the same authors who commend the integrity of those who do (e.g. Glazer and Glazer 1989: 206−207 and passim).»

Though British and American whistleblowers may interfere, communicate mix with each other, but these groups differ by their prioritizing the problems and the directions of their activity. English whistleblowers are relatively young, small and inaggressive organizations, and their main aim is to protect employees from the consequences of malpractice of their chiefs. What some of them do is just giving advice to the victims. American whistleblowers are different; their main enemy is the corruption, especially in the highest spheres of the society; they tend to control the governmental organizations (and make their working conditions «transparent») and often support the government’s democratic policy. These people appeal to numeral laws created specially for granting their safety and their right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print.: e.g. the International Convent on Civil and Political Rights (esp. its article 19 about the freedom of speech), chapter 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (about anyone’s right to have and express his or her opinion, Article I of the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, etc.



Теги: whistleblowers, speaker