MESSAGE
| DATE | 2004-09-07 |
| FROM | From: "Inker, Evan"
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Whistle-blowers form a breed apart
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Whistle-blowers form a breed apart
By Jayne O'Donnell, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON - When people think of corporate whistle-blowers, Enron's Sherron
Watkins probably comes to mind. Confident and well-coiffed in testimony
before Congress, she was the picture of corporate responsibility.
Pfizer scientistDavid Franklin won a $27M settlement in a case accusing
Pfizer of marketing a drug for unapproved uses.
Time magazine named her one of its "People of the Year" in 2002. Watkins
went on to become a consultant and high-profile public speaker. Several
former Enron executives have been charged or convicted since her revelations
about Enron's accounting.
Things rarely turn out that well for whistle-blowers, who speak out against
corporate misdeeds and cast themselves as company pariahs. Whistle-blowers
might be heroes to people tired of the scandals that have swept Corporate
America, but they often find themselves near-penniless, their home lives and
emotional well-being in shambles, and followed by private investigators.
Whistle-blowers persist because that's the way they are - a breed apart,
driven by a desire to expose dirty executives, protect consumers or avenge
wrongs they feel have been done to them.
Two years ago Friday, President Bush signed an Enron-inspired law that gave
whistle-blowers at public companies the right to sue for anything that could
affect shareholders. Since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed, corporate
whistle-blowers have filed 97 cases under the law against companies from
Home Depot to Hewlett-Packard.
With or without the backing of the federal government, some people can't
imagine keeping quiet when they witness what they believe is wrongdoing. For
some, it seems, whistle-blowing becomes almost a way of life.
"They are very ethical people who follow through on what they were taught as
children," says Donald Soeken, a Laurel, Md.-based psychotherapist and an
expert witness who specializes in psychological issues in whistle-blowers.
"But if someone came to me beforehand, I'd tell them, 'If you can't do it
anonymously, don't do it, because you'll be sacrificing yourself.' "
Enron's Watkins once read a description of whistle-blowers that suggested
they can be "high-maintenance, because they're so forceful." She thought it
fit her to T. "Sometimes I make a mountain out of a molehill," she said.
Ed Bricker, one of the first nuclear industry whistle-blowers, has nearly
made a career out of whistle-blowing. Bricker, 49, says he has faced
retaliation since he went undercover for Congress in the 1980s to expose
health hazards at a nuclear plant in Hanford, Wash. His crusade has had
unwelcome consequences.
Bricker's daughter Debbie Deerwester, now 25, remembers when she and fellow
sixth-graders were asked to explain their parents' careers. She said her
father was a whistle-blower at Hanford.
"One boy interrupted and said, 'Whistle-blowers are tattletales!' " she
said. "I was devastated, because I was proud of what my dad stood for and
thought that everyone else saw it the same way."
Bricker, balding and chatty, left his federal job in 1991, after he says
co-workers at Hanford assaulted him and made life-threatening calls to his
wife. In 1994, he settled a whistle-blower lawsuit for $200,000 against
Westinghouse and Rockwell, which had contracts with the Energy Department to
run the nuclear site. The companies did not acknowledge wrongdoing.
The fight took its toll on Bricker, who is Mormon. "I'd look myself in the
mirror and think, 'Is your job worth it that you can't live with yourself
and pollute the air your relatives breathe?' " he said.
Now working at Washington state's health department in a role unrelated to
nuclear safety, Bricker continues to speak out about possible safety
problems - including, one time, a terrorism hotline he says didn't work.
Co-workers once put up a mock death-threat poster that he says was directed
at him, and he was told to see a psychologist when he complained.
He's suing the state for damages from the harassment and stress. He says he
suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and "stupidity - for sticking
with it."
Of the toll on his family, Bricker said, "They're tired of it, and it's sad
because they went through this once before."
Gary Larson, a spokesman for the Washington attorney general, says the state
denies Bricker's allegations. "This state is protective of whistle-blowers
and has a long-standing policy of encouraging people to come forward and to
see they are protected when they do," he said.
Protecting the public good
Whistle-blowers often feel it's their responsibility to speak up for those
who can't.
Last fall, Mark Livingston filed a federal lawsuit under Sarbanes-Oxley. In
it, he alleges he lost his job as a quality control manager at Wyeth because
he complained repeatedly about manufacturing practices for a vaccine that
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says is given to about 60% of
infants. The soft-spoken and slightly built Livingston, 46, says he saw the
drug company take shortcuts in the manufacture of Prevnar, a vaccine for
meningitis and pneumonia, endangering babies.
Wyeth spokesman Doug Petkus denies Livingston's allegations. "The safety of
this vaccine is not in question," Petkus said.
George Holmes, a former training manager for Livingston, says Livingston
faced resistance from the time he arrived at Wyeth to institute a training
program required under a Justice Department consent decree. The 2000 decree,
which also required Wyeth to pay the government $30 million, addressed
deviations in manufacturing practices at two plants and other quality
control problems.
Holmes says he witnessed "repercussions" against Livingston after a deadline
from the decree was not met because the plant wasn't documenting or
emphasizing training enough. He says the human resources director showed up
uninvited at training sessions and at a work-related 2002 Christmas party
Livingston was hosting at a local restaurant.
Livingston says he warned the H.R. director he would ask the police to
escort him from the party if he didn't leave. Six days later, Livingston
lost his job. Petkus says Livingston was fired for "unruly and
unprofessional behavior toward a co-worker." Livingston's case is in
deposition and discovery in federal district court in North Carolina.
Companies often suggest that whistle-blowers have mental health or addiction
issues. Whistle-blowers say any problems they have come from the stress
associated with taking on a company.
Livingston says he still wakes up in the night, shaking and sweating
uncontrollably, which he believes is attributable to post-traumatic stress
disorder. He has been diagnosed by a psychiatrist with anxiety and
depression. Not long ago, the North Carolinian didn't want to leave his
house.
'Utter loneliness'
Jim Torgerson was a senior manager at American Express until, he says, he
went on medical leave to get away from harassment that followed his
complaints about a faulty technology contract. He says it became so bad he
was "dry-heaving on the way to work."
Torgerson complained about a contract AmEx had signed with an
Internet-related company that specialized in procurement management and that
he says was owned by a friend of American Express Chairman Kenneth Chenault.
In August 2001, the Internet firm's computers malfunctioned - allowing
hundreds of vendors and suppliers to see one another's confidential data -
and Torgerson says AmEx tried to cover it up. He reported the problem to the
general counsel's office.
He says retaliation, including negative personnel memos and constant
criticism, soon began. Torgerson, who has strong Lutheran beliefs, says his
manager once called him "Christian boy." After Torgerson, 50, had been on
medical leave about two months, he says, the company fired him in December
2001.
"There's a sense of utter loneliness even when you have family supporting
you and you know you're right," he said. Torgerson, who worked for AmEx in
Arizona, has a 12-count lawsuit pending against the company in federal court
there. American Express said Torgerson resigned, and spokesman Tony Mitchell
said Torgerson's "whistle-blower claim is without merit."
Retaliation often follows
Whistle-blowers say that once their complaints become public, the workplace
often becomes hostile and threatening.
"You know your intentions were good, and it's kind of surprising to see
people think otherwise," said Enron's Watkins.
Sandra Moore, one of a handful of female electricians at General Motors,
says the atmosphere at the Pontiac, Mich., truck plant where she worked was
worse than she'd ever imagined. She says graphic pornography was stacked a
foot high on tables and viewed on computer screens. She thinks that allowed
her supervisors to feel it was almost acceptable to proposition and harass
her, as she says they often did.
Moore, 47, says her complaints to managers and to the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission, and a subsequent lawsuit, led to death threats. She
also says she was dumped with water from a bucket with electrical wires in
it.
Moore wants to keep her job because of pay and benefits she says could total
$160,000 a year. "I earned the right," she said.
GM spokesman Kerry Christopher says the company takes "discrimination and
harassment issues very seriously," but he says Moore's allegations have no
merit. He says Moore has filed charges against GM three times, and each time
the EEOC ruled against her.
Moore is on sick leave because she says the environment was too stressful.
She's suing GM in state court in Michigan. Christopher says GM hasn't "taken
any adverse action against her employment." The automaker also says Moore
never mentioned the pornography or assault when deposed by company lawyers,
so it would not comment on specifics.
Some payoffs in the end
Despite the frustration, some whistle-blowers see results. David Franklin, a
scientist at Pfizer, recently won a $27 million settlement in a lawsuit
accusing the company of defrauding Medicaid by encouraging doctors to
prescribe a drug for unapproved uses.
In Watkins' case, former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay was indicted July 7 on
11 counts of conspiracy and fraud after an array of charges against other
former executives and guilty pleas by several.
Peter Scannell, a former employee at Boston-based Putnam Investments, told
state securities officials about irregular stock trading by union members
and helped expose the mutual fund scandal last year. He says that made his
efforts worth it, though he says he was hit over the head by a
brick-wielding assailant in a union sweatshirt and is still occasionally
followed. He hopes to return to work in financial services and maybe to
write a book.
Longtime whistle-blower Bricker, whose lawsuit is pending, isn't as
confident of his prospects: "Where am I going to go? Who's going to hire
me?"
Regards,
Evan M. Inker (New York) x. 4615
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