Life after Whistleblowing
Wells
Fargo Bank’s phony customer accounts trouble started
back in 2005. That was when Julie
Tishkoff started to complain internally about the bank’s improper procedures. Fired in 2009, she appealed
to the U.S. Department of Labor. DoL
ruled against her so she
sued the bank in 2011. The bank replied
vigorously. Discussion of her case stopped
short in 2012 when she accepted $200,000 to settle her wrongful termination
suit. These settlements typically come
with nondisclosure clauses. So her
difficulties after Wells Fargo fired her didn’t come to light until she had tax problems
involving the payment.
Yesenia
Guitron did not go so quietly.
Wells Fargo hired Guitron as a personal banker in March
2008. Personal bankers’ compensation was
driven by daily quotas particularly for new accounts – the bank inspired its employee
misconduct. Two months later she noticed
that another personal banker, Corina
Zavaleta, was opening and closing accounts without the customers’ permission. She criticized Zavaleta’s behavior for
months. In August 2009, Guitron received
a negative performance review, and in November Zavaleta was selected to be Employee
of the Month at the St. Helena (California) branch. The following January Guitron was dismissed for
insubordination or put on leave – the story is unclear. In any event she was fired in February 2010.
Then began Guitron’s legal fight against the bank. Wells’ first
reply to her complaint denied most of her claims and listed eighteen
additional defenses. Their scuffle went on
for another five years before the U.S. Court of Appeals refused
her in 2018.
Guitron’s story might have died away quietly if her
attorney, Peretz & Associates, had been
as faint-hearted as mine was against
HomeFirst. Or if she had settled as
Tishkoff did. She could have been silenced
by a non-disclosure/non-disparagement clause like the one
HomeFirst proposed to me.
We might have lost interest in her story if Wells Fargo had
been a small-time wrongdoer like HomeFirst.
Or if it had not persisted in its wrongdoing and its retaliations
against employees who resisted. Instead,
it went on until 3.4
million false accounts were created.
It went on until it fired
at least 5,300 employees who were involved.
Until hundreds
of whistleblower complaints were made about its sales tactics. Until it was fined $185
million and repaid customers more than $140 million. And still the bank did more bad stuff. Its
mortgage loan fraud, for example.
Guitron spoke out in her legal filings. She also went on CBS
News. She appeared in the New
York Times, the local
press, and banking
media. She was subpoenaed
by the Department of Justice in its Wells Fargo probe. She still wins
an occasional award for her whistleblowing.
Her story not only persisted but it grew in value because
she continued her life after her battle with Wells Fargo. No longer in banking, she has worked in
property management for the past several years.
She raises her children. Last
year she got
married. The loss of her
whistleblower case did nothing to end her life.
Whistleblowing is often described as a personal disaster for
those who speak out[1]. Hoped-for financial rewards[2]
are seldom received, and comfort from our moral purity can be paltry. Our heroes risk, and sometimes suffer, jail time, and
others must live in
exile.
This storyline is outdated because whistleblowing
has been democratized. The number of
whistleblowers increased as legal and social boundaries multiplied. In a world crowded with self-concerned people,
we are more likely to step on others’ toes.
When more corporations perform the work of government, more rules are
written and violated. Misdeeds are quotidian,
so we need to abandon the idea our adventures are uniquely heroic.
Not only should our dissent be commonplace, we should expect
retaliation, however wrong, to be routine as well. We must plan to minimize the personal effects
of retaliation and to live afterward.
Guitron’s life is different from what it might have been if
she had not testified against Wells Fargo.
But she demonstrates that those who call out wrongs can survive. Less dramatically, I survived my own whistleblowing
at HomeFirst. Like Guitron, I suppose,
and most whistleblowers described by Alford[3],
I suffered various retaliations though surely less severe than others’. My life changed after whistleblowing as all
lives change.
Companies defend themselves by asserting we are not really
whistleblowers[4]. We are just disgruntled, poor performing
employees, they say, or not employees at all.
They lie, of course. But we are
not whistleblowers in the old-fashioned sense.
We are everyday whistleblowers who must go on after this particular adventure
has ended.
[1] For
example, Alford,
C. Fred. Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational
Power. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University. 2001
[2] See
Kohn, Stephen Martin. The
New Whistleblower’s Handbook.
Guilford, CT. 2017, and my
earlier comment
[3]
Alford, ibid.
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