Whistleblower Protection Blog : Whistleblower Lawyer & Attorney : National Whistleblower Legal Defense and Education Fund : Whistleblower Protection, Fraud Claims : Washington DC

TAKE ACTION!

FDA Spy Program Documents Linked Here

As reported in today's Washington Post, six current and former employees of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have filed a complaint against the FDA in U.S. District Court. The employees are seeking an injunction to stop the agency from illegally spying on employees' private communications to Congress and other oversight agencies.

Linked here are key documents related to this lawsuit and the FDA's spying program.

The complaint details how the FDA targeted its employees with a covert spying campaign that lasted for two years. The FDA began the program after learning that the employees wrote a letter to President-Elect Obama and his transition team in early 2009 detailing government misconduct in approving unsafe medical devices.  The Agency installed (or activated) spyware on their workplace computers and used other technology that to monitor their password-protected Gmail-to-Gmail communications.

In addition to reading the whistleblowers' emails, the FDA took contemporaneous screen shots of the employees’ computer screens. Managers used the collected information to learn the identities of confidential whistleblowers and to obtain the details of the public health and safety concerns the whistleblowers intended to disclose to the Office of Special Counsel, Congress and the Agency's own Inspector General.

The FDA also intercepted email communications to and from staff members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee.  These Congressional intercepts are linked here.

The FDA’s prolonged covert monitoring of the whistleblowers continued even after the HHS Office of Inspector General denied the FDA’s request to take any criminal and/or administrative action against the whistleblowers. In their letter of refusal, the OIG explicitly informed the FDA that the whistleblowers' communications to Congress were protected under law.

The managers who spearheaded the surveillance efforts were the same managers involved with the wrongdoing and corruption that the whistleblowers were seeking to report. Lawyers at the FDA and HHS Offices of General Counsel, who should have understood that the program breached the employees’ confidentiality, helped FDA managers with their obstruction and retaliation.

In their lawsuit, six FDA whistleblowers who were fired by the agency (including two highly respected medical doctors, a Branch Chief, a former Health and Safety Officer employed by the Public Health Service and a 23-year FDA career M.D./Ph.D Scientist) are requesting a nationwide injunction prohibiting the federal government from targeting whistleblowers with selected surveillance and monitoring.

The lawsuit alleges that such targeted monitoring of whistleblowers violates their First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and association.

Stephen M. Kohn, NWC Executive Director and attorney for six FDA whistleblowers, issued the following statement:

The FDA declared war on employees who were trying to warn Americans about threats to public health and safety.

Today, the NWC issued an Action Alert seeking public support for the FDA whistleblowers and demanding an end to the federal government's targeted and selective surveillance of whistleblowers.

The NWC obtained the intercepted emails as a result of a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act and from documents produced by the FDA as a result of administrative actions taken against three of the whistleblowers.

Links:  

FDA Whistleblower Complaint

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

You can catch Dr. Coleman-Adebayo's lecture at the Mid-Manhattan Library on C-Span/Book TV starting tomorrow. Called No FEAR: A Whistleblowers Triumph, the lecture draws on her book, NO FEAR: A Whistleblower's Triumph Over Corruption and Retaliation at EPA.  You can read our coverage of her book signing here.

C-SPAN will air Dr. Coleman-Adebayo's lecture:

Saturday, January 21st at 9:15am (ET)
Saturday, January 21st at 4:30pm (ET)
Sunday, January 22nd at 10pm (ET)

UPDATE: Dr. Coleman-Adebayo's lecture is now available from C-SPAN online.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

This week, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a major decision holding that employees have an inalienable right to bring collective and class action lawsuits. The National Whistleblowers Center (NWC) joined with the National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA) and other groups in an amicus brief to urge the NLRB to reach this decision.

This long-recognized right of employees to bring collective and class actions is under attack by forced arbitration agreements. Sophisticated companies demand that all their employees give up these rights as a condition of employment. "An employer’s requirement that its employees prospectively waive their rights to engage in concerted legal activity about their conditions of employment is as much a violation of section 8(a)(1) as a 'yellow dog contract' prohibiting unionization altogether," the amicus brief argued.

In this case, the D.R. Horton company attempted to use a recent Supreme Court decision to block collective actions by employees. In AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 131 S. Ct. 1740 (2011), a 5-4 majority held that companies can use the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) to block consumers from bringing class action arbitrations. However, the Supreme Court was looking at California's attempt to hold such arbitration agreements unconscionable. The Supreme Court did not consider the effect of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 29 U.S.C. § 157, which specifically protects the right of covered employees to act in concert for their mutual aid and protection. Courts have long held that this federal right specifically protects the right of employees to join together in legal actions against their employer. Eastex Inc. v. NLRB, 437 U.S. 556, 566 (1978). No union is necessary for employees to be protected when they act in concert. Brady v. NFL, 644 F.3d 661, 673 (8th Cir. July 8, 2011). Still, it would be good if Congress would enact the Arbitration Fairness Act (AFA) to prohibit companies from forcing any arbitration agreements on consumers or employees.

The NLRB explained its decision saying:

It is well settled that “mutual aid or protection” includes employees’ efforts to “improve terms and conditions of employment or otherwise improve their lot as employees through channels outside the immediate employe-eemployer relationship.” Eastex, Inc. v. NLRB, 437 U.S.556, 565–566 (1978). The Supreme Court specifically stated in Eastex that Section 7 “protects employees from retaliation by their employer when they seek to improve their working conditions through resort to administrative and judicial forums.” Id. at 565-566. The same is equally true of resort to arbitration.

The NLRB adopted this argument suggested by our amicus brief:

Modern Federal labor policy begins not with the NLRA, but with earlier legislation, the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932, which aimed to limit the power of Federal courts both to issue injunctions in labor disputes and to enforce “yellow dog” contracts prohibiting employees from joining labor unions. Thus, Congress has aimed to prevent employers from imposing contracts on individual employees requiring that they agree to forego engaging in concerted activity since before passage of the NLRA. [Footnotes omitted.]

This decision applies only to those employees who work for private companies in the United States and have a right to organize a union. However, it will apply to these employees whether or not they actually have a union.  Additionally, NLRB decision often lead other agencies to adopt the same policies. In the past, some NLRB policies have been overturned once a new president appoints Board members who have different philosophies.

Special thanks go to attorneys Michael C. Subit (of Frank Freed Subit & Thomas LLP in Seattle, Washington), Victoria W. Ni (of Public Justice in Oakland, California) and Rebecca M. Hamburg (of the National Employment Lawyers Association in San Francisco) for leading the organizing and writing for this brief.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link