Whistleblowing Rights and Responsibilities

Safety training is your job so you have a vested interest in ensuring that your workers never have the occasion to report unsafe conditions or actions. But you still need to let them know that they have the right to report such situations—if they should ever occur—without fear of retaliation. Take some time to give your workers an overview of their rights and responsibilities under federal law.

Explain how the Occupational Safety and Health Act gives your workers a number of important safety-related rights, including the right to:

• Express to your employer concerns about unsafe conditions and request hazard correction.
• File a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) about workplace hazards your employer has not corrected.
• Participate in OSHA inspections and talk to inspectors about unsafe conditions.
• Participate or testify in any proceeding related to an OSHA inspection or enforcement action.
• Know about hazardous chemicals in the workplace and about hazardous exposures.
• Ask for information about injuries and illnesses in the workplace.

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In addition, your workers have the right to be free from retaliation for exercising these OSHA rights, which means that an employer cannot take adverse action against workers for engaging in any protected activity, such as complaining about safety conditions, filing an OSHA complaint, or participating in an OSHA inspection. Furthermore, Section 11(c) of the Act says that employers may not punish or discriminate against employees for exercising such rights as complaining to the employer, union, OSHA, or any other government agency about job safety and health hazards.

Explain to your workers what exactly OSHA means by punish. For example, OSHA defines "adverse action" as any action that would dissuade a reasonable employee from engaging in protected activity. Depending on the circumstances of the case, adverse action can include:

• Firing or laying off
• Blacklisting
• Denying overtime, promotion, or benefits
• Disciplining
• Demoting
• Failing to hire or rehire
• Threats or intimidation
• Reassignment affecting prospects for promotion
• Reducing pay or hours

Workers also have a limited right to refuse to do a job if they believe in good faith that they are exposed to an imminent danger. Their right to refuse to do a task is protected if all of the following conditions are met:

• Where possible, they have asked the employer to eliminate the danger, and the employer failed to do so.
• They refused to work in “good faith,” which means that they must genuinely believe that an imminent danger exists. (Their refusal cannot be a disguised attempt to harass their employer or disrupt business.)
• A reasonable person would agree that there is a real danger of death or serious injury.
• There isn’t enough time, due to the urgency of the hazard, to get it corrected through regular enforcement channels, such as requesting an OSHA inspection.

When all of these conditions are met, the employee must take the following steps:

• Ask your employer to correct the hazard.
• Ask your employer for other work.
• Tell your employer that you won’t perform the work unless and until the hazard is corrected.
• Remain at the worksite until ordered to leave by your employer.

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Finally, inform workers that if they believe they have been retaliated against for exercising safety and health rights, they should contact OSHA within 30 days to report the retaliation.

Use this opportunity to discuss the proper procedure for reporting unsafe conditions or unsafe acts in your workplace. Make sure employees understand that your organization welcomes and acts on information about hazards.

Why It Matters

• In one recent year, there were more than 4,500 work-related deaths on the job.
• There were more than 3,000,000 work-related injuries and illnesses in private industry.
• Workers are closest to the jobs and jobsites since they are the ones performing the work, so they have the best knowledge of when unsafe acts or conditions exist.
• They need to feel free to report such situations so that the unsafe situations can be corrected before injury, illness, or death occurs.