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There are some employers out there who have trouble doing the right thing. If you are an employee that doesn’t want to work for an unethical boss and speaks up then you may face retaliation for it. Since there are whistleblower laws on the books, they know that they can’t just fire you.
They retaliate against you to make you miserable and quit voluntarily. Retaliation takes on a lot of different forms. It can be changing your schedule, giving you a demotion, or passing you over for promotions. If you feel that you are facing retaliation for speaking up about something that didn’t sit well with you then you should take some steps.
1 – Wrongful termination
You may know for a fact that you were fired by your boss because of the thing that you spoke up about. However, proving a wrongful termination isn’t easy just based on you saying so. For instance, at-will employment in New York means that there doesn’t necessarily have to be a detailed justification for somebody being fired and many other states are at-will, too.
There are some employers out there who have trouble doing the right thing. If you are an employee that doesn’t want to work for an unethical boss and speaks up then you may face retaliation for it.Click To TweetTo beat a wrongful termination to either get your job back or seek compensation for lost wages, you will need to have a lot of evidence that supports why you think you were fired.
2 – You suddenly get negative performance reviews
You were once a model employee and now that you did something to upset the apple cart you have become persona non grata. This usually shows itself in negative performance reviews that used to be stellar before. They’re a pretext for the boss to start giving you demotions, changing your schedule, or otherwise doing things to make you quit voluntarily.
There are some companies that can’t handle employees speaking up about things and will put things in motion to get them to either obey or leave. For instance, if you have been discriminated against, or harassed and take it to HR then you may find these performance reviews happening after that.
3 – Being passed over for promotions
A promotion or raise is not a guarantee and there are many factors that go into getting one. In most companies, seniority on its own doesn’t mean that you will automatically be the one to get a promotion when something opens up.
However, there are times when promotions and raises are used as a weapon. Denying somebody a deserved raise when others are getting one for lesser reasons is an indication that you are being retaliated against and have cause for concern.
If you were getting regular raises and promotions that stopped suddenly and that coincides with when you decided to speak up about something then the timing shows that it isn’t because you suddenly became a bad employee.
It’s difficult to prove that your lack of mobility all of a sudden is because of your whistleblowing act and not because you don’t deserve it. This is because there are no set guidelines on promotions and it is always up to the discretion of the management. There is plenty of room for plausible deniability.
