I’ve been participating in (environmental) audits at my company this week, more as an observer then anything, and yesterday I saw something that can only be described as a blatant disregard for the environment. The site in question is about 400 - 500 meters from a major river, and they are dumping readymix overage and wash out water into holes dug in the ground. These holes are not lined nor monitored/sampled. There are no groundwater monitoring wells either (the groundwater would be flowing towards the river). The ground here is a topsoil/sand/clay/water table.
I’ve read through regulations I can find, and the site permit, and can’t find anything specific on this pit (it’s actually a typical practice to dump readymix, let it dry, then pick it up and recycle - but it’s supposed to be done in long lines, on clay packed ground, not in a hole like this). However, it could be covered under Department of Fisheries and Oceans reg’s - ‘depositing deleterious substances’ into an area where it will or is reaching a fish bearing water body (this is the reg most companies get fined for).
Anyhow, I guess my question is, would you anonymously report something like this? I’m not going to, but it got me to thinking about what I would do if it was something major, or a major safety issue instead of environmental.
If someone did report something like this, would they be protected from prosecution (keep in mind I’m in Alberta, Canada, but please reply with what your jurisdiction would do)? Could a company fire you for doing something like this if they found out it was you?
Off to do more audits…hopefully we don’t find anything worse.
Well, since I live where you live, HELL YES (and I think you should, too). I don’t know if you have to tell a government agency exactly what’s going on, or just give them an anonymous head’s up that a site inspection would be a really, REALLY good idea for this site, but yes, I would do something. If it’s a construction site downtown, they build well under the water table, and everything they dump goes straight into the water system. If the government agency chooses not to do anything, that’s fine - I would do my due diligence and sleep well at night.
Companies have gotten Exceptionally good at circumventing whistle-blower laws. Do this & you will be gone by some other means inside of 2 years and in a way that will make you look like a bad employee and a poor risk to hire. Have your reference letters in hand & signed (and possibly other employment lined up & locked in) before you even consider it.
First, on the substance. Best practice is indeed to put overage into a lined container/pit and contain wash-out water. But if this is a construction site, where concrete pouring will only be going on for a limited time, then an unlined pit isn’t a huge deal (I mean, the building foundation itself is basically an unlined pit full of concrete, and nobody thinks that’s a disaster, so concrete can’t be too bad, right?). If it’s a plant that produces concrete, so this is a long-term ongoing thing, then I think most jurisdictions would probably want to see a little more than an unlined pit, but I don’t know much about Alberta’s requirements. It’s possible that this is in compliance.
On the bigger point, sure I’d drop a dime, but there are a bunch of ways to do that. First step is probably pointing out to superiors that the company could be liable for fines, etc. if they don’t come into compliance. For something like this, that would be obvious to an inspector, an anonymous tip to the regulating agency gets the job done. And if the inspector ends up talking to you, you can range from volunteering nothing to dropping hints, to privately telling the inspector that you’d like him to fine the company, so management would start listening to their compliance guys.
It’s pretty hard to retaliate against an anonymous tip. And while there may be some industries and agencies where inspectors might tend to reveal sources to company management, environmental agencies, especially on a national or provincial level, are probably pretty good about guarding that kind of information. So short of a criminal trial where you have to testify, you can probably drop a dime even using your name without much fear.
More serious situation where anonymity is harder, I’d be more careful, and you’d have to weigh the good of blowing the whistle versus your job security.
The problem you have is that there is an obligation to first let the company address the issue and hopefully resolve. I mean, that is the point of your internal audit, right? You don’t want an outside body finding the problem first and fining the company/hurting the company’s reputation. It is also entirely possible that the company doesn’t know this is going on and that a small group of employees is violating company policy because this illegal practice is easier than doing things the proper way. Then you have the issues Count Blucher pointed out.
The flipside is that perhaps your company is very aware of this illegal practice and perhaps it is being done everywhere, or perhaps it is only at your site. Now the problem is, if you warn them and they do nothing, then there is an ‘anonymous tip’ sent in shortly thereafter, it doesn’t take much detective work to pin the blame on you.
Yes, I have actually done so. Myself, Davina and another co-worker reported Budget Truck Rental in Va Beach [also they held franchise locations in Norfolk and Newport News] to the Labor Board. The various irregularities ended up with them having to find 7 years worth of employees and paying them owed wages/compensation. They also had some punitive damages they were fined.
I think I ended up with not just my first paycheck, my final paycheck, but another $700 or so of assorted unpaid time that I worked that they massaged the payroll to vanish in their favor.
The main issue I went to report was they held my first weeks paycheck and because I didn’t give them a months notice, they also held my final paycheck. They did not realize that I held copies of the various paperwork I signed off upon when I was hired that outlined certain illegal and irregular payroll practices. That sort of cooked their goose.
Moral of the story? Don’t peeve people that work alone on slow Sunday mornings and have access to files and a copy machine.
You’re performing the audit. You should ask some leading questions as to the acceptability of this practice and follow the audit trail: as simple as that.
Either you will find that the practice is acceptable, and your company will be able to substantiate this with objective evidence, or you will find out that no one knows. At this point you raise a non-conformance and wait for an acceptable response from senior management. An acceptable response isn’t “that’s what we’ve always done.”
An acceptable response would be “in our site license section blah, blah blah,” or “according to section blah, blah, blah of the Department of Fisheries and Ocean regulation yada, yada, yada…”
The Times this morning reported on a $750 million fine paid by Smithkline Glaxo from a whistleblower case. She was one of a team of quality control people sent to a plant in Puerto Rico after the FDA sent a letter outline possible violations. They found it much worse than the FDA was aware of. She reported it to senior management, it was ignored, and she got fired. The plant, their biggest, eventually got closed, and she got $69 million.
She did go through the system. If there is a question about management’s reaction, I’d take some data home to store, but not report anything to regulators until the proper channels are pursued, and most big companies have channels that allow you to bypass your direct management chain if they seem in on it. But one must plan on being fired as an annoyance (sorry, made redundant) even if you don’t go outside.
If you EVER run across a problem at work you NEVER, I repeat NEVER tell your superiors. They aren’t interested in fixing it, 'cause they would’ve done. Do you really think they don’t know? Of course they do.
You don’t report it to the government authority, because they can be bought off quickly.
If you want it done you go to the media. The press and the TV/radio.
You do this anonymously.
If you tell your bosses something is amiss and then they do nothing, you cannot fix this problem 'cause if you then report it, it will be assumed that you reported it.
Not good at all.
Companies hire auditors to cover there butts not to fix things. They know what’s wrong. They want an auditor (internal or external) to find for them.
I know when I had my own business, companies would hire me to audit and they told me exactly what I was expected to find. If I found anything different, I wouldn’t be hired. It was plainly made clear they wanted the answers they wanted.
Don’t say anything to anyone. Play dumb, report it to the media. And if no one does nothing, well not much you can do, except keep a file of your anonymous report so you can clear your name should it come to the worst
Keeping your head in the sand may work if you are a low-level employee or technician. As you rise up the corporate ranks it becomes a lot harder to just pretend like you don’t see problems. Indeed you yourself could become culpable if you knowingly allow problems to persist.
I say, give them a chance to rectify the problem, and if they fail to do so, sing it from the mountains! (but yeah, have your resume up to date/interviews lined up)
I think it really depends on the company. I would certainly report a potential regulatory problem to my superiors and/or the appropriate office at my current company, because I have confidence that they would take it seriously and take appropriate measures. This would certainly not have been the case at some of my previous employers. (One of several reasons I enjoy working here …)
I’m just an observer, I have no authority to do or say anything about this pit.
This pit has been brought up to senior management a number of times as it’s been caught in previous audits by the area environmental guy. I had a chance to sort of slyly bring it up today and he said he’s brought the issue up on more then one occassion as both an environmental and financial liability and he said there is a lot of finger pointing but no one will take responsibility. The vice president of this region is fully aware of it and essentially told the environment guy to not worry about it.
This is not a construction site. This is a facility, so it’s a long term issue, not temporary.
I’m not sure what to do about this yet…thanks for the comments so far!
So, there’s already internal documentation reporting this, and there’s management responses to ignore it. Hmmm. I’m torn actually.
What about an email to your MPP with your concerns, and a request for anonymity? I know it sounds absurd that this should be reported to a politician, and I may be naive, but that’s probably what I would do if I was seriously concerned. Your MPP would know to whom the complaint should be addressed.
I’ve had excellent responses from my local city councillor, and my member of parliament in the last couple of years when I’ve emailed their offices with very disparate complaints.
Ohhhh, great suggestion and perfect timing Leaffan. About a month ago, I’d have said no way, as my company securely had much of the city council in their pocket, including the mayor. However, we recently brought in a new city council and they seem to care less about industry back scratching.
This is the decision I’ve come to: The audit we were preforming was a systems audit, not a compliance audit, so this finding is actually out of scope. However, the external auditor and audit team (internal, from another region) felt it was a big enough deal to mention it in the audit report and the audit debrief this afternoon. I am going to give it this winter to see if they do anything. The reason I am waiting so long is because everything is starting to slow down and this would be the perfect opportunity for them to do something.
If it’s still there in the spring when things get going again, I’ll report it to the area alderman or Alberta Environment.
I talked to my husband about this and he is pissed. He is a city Fire Department diver, and they are often in that river swimming (as are many other people in the summer). He thinks it’s disgusting and we almost went ahead with him doing the report, but decided against it for now.
I’ve posted before about how I used to do Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) consulting and had a client that wanted to be HIPAA compliant that was an organization largely providing health services to the homeless, illegal aliens, and the very poor. I pointed out to them in my audit that their system of using ex-cons and other questionable people to perform services for clients that either didn’t know they were supposed to get the services, or didn’t have a permanent address to verify the services had been done was asking for trouble and that there was very likely to be fraud going on. They ultimately felt that because these people worked in pairs that one would report the other if some wrongdoing was going on, rather than both colluding to commit fraud.
Guess what? Eventually someone got fired, and they got reported for massive fraud because the people who were supposed to be providing services to the homeless never showed up to do so, and the ones that were supposed to be providing supplies to new mothers in poor neighborhoods were selling them instead.
I’ve worked at the same company for 26 years (okay; it’s been bought by different owners, so it’s the third version of the same company), and these past few weeks I got very uneasy about a proposal we were on the verge of submitting, and told my supervisor & the director-just-below-vice-president that if we submitted a proposal that we knew we couldn’t execute and our customer knew they couldn’t execute, that I’d strongly consider calling the Waste, Fraud & Abuse number. If it was merely outrageously optimistic and would run my people to the ground, I would likely leave my position.
The feces really impacted the air circulation unit (though not just because of my private statements), a large contingent of customers are here, angry and frothing at the mouth about having to stay through the Halloween weekend, everything is in crisis and I have never seen such a high degree of outright hostility between both parties. But this is something I can live with.
YMMV; there are areas in companies or entire companies that have different cultures.
ETA: As luck would have it, I chatted briefly with the actual vice president, and he confirmed that this is the worst, most contentious effort he’s ever seen, offered his opinion that we would painfully make it through this mess, and that this was something that probably needed to happen as we establish our new business unit.
