Protection from the State of California (Part 2)

Protection from the State of California (Part 2)

I finally got a call from the deputy labor commissioner who will be handling my case.  She had a few questions.  She said she was trying to make heads or tails out of the response I had sent to the office.  I suppose her comment referred to a conversation with someone in the office in which she admitted not being able to make heads or tails out of the document.  She expressed some exasperation at the 42 – 42! – attachments to the document, which, of course, she had not read entirely.  This was not going well, I thought.

She asked, reasonably enough, whether I had proof that I had been fired and that I had actually filed complaints.  She suggested that it is normal to deliver three duplicate copies of the complaint to the office involved – one for the office, one for the company, and one to be time-stamped for the complainant’s records.  I began to panic a little.  None of the websites had suggested a need for triplicate copies and time-stamping.   Many of the complaints were filed in Sacramento, a 2+ hour drive from my home in Mountain View; personally delivering each complaint seemed an unreasonable requirement.  Most, but not all, on-line whistleblower web sites sent confirmation emails; that would help.  Two of the offices had lost my complaints at least once.  One wanted only telephoned complaints and provided no confirmation.

The idea of including a copy of the complaint for the company conflicted with the goal of protecting the whistleblower.   Even a redacted copy would risk identifying the whistleblower.  Then, revealing the detailed information – internal emails in one of my cases – could enable the company to shut off access to sources that might reveal further violations.

She had more questions:  Was I represented by an attorney?  No.  I did not describe my deepened distrust of attorneys.  Was I working?  No.  When did I stop working?  This disturbing line of questions seemed to point to reducing the need for a penalty to be imposed on HomeFirst.  Or perhaps I was just being paranoid after nearly two years of failure in pressing my case.

She gave me her contact information so I could deliver the information to her.  She did not recall her address immediately and had to look at her business card.  I pictured a new hire who was handed mine as one of her first cases.  She worked in the same San Jose office that had twice lost my complaints about a minimum wage issue, that had not returned my calls, and that had not conducted an investigation of my complaint in the past year and a half.  This did not look promising.

The next day I sent her a twenty-five page document with the information she requested, including another ten attachments.

Lessons for the whistleblower:

1.       Keep copies of all outgoing and incoming communications even vaguely related to your complaints and your termination

2.       If you mail complaints, request confirmations of delivery

3.       If you report via an on-line hotline, consider taking screen shots of confirmation messages unless you are certain that a confirming email will be sent to you.

4.       Consider personally delivering duplicate copies of the complaint and getting one of them time-stamped for your files.