In some cases, yes; so said the Court of Appeal in the recent case of Kong v Gulf International Bank (UK) Limited, which upheld an Employment Tribunal decision to dismiss a claim for automatic unfair dismissal brought by a whistleblower on the basis that it was the employee’s conduct in the way the disclosure was made that led to dismissal, not the whistleblowing disclosures that she had made.
This isn’t a new issue for employers, nor is it a straightforward one. On the one hand, the whole purpose of the UK’s whistleblowing regime is to enable malpractice to be identified, and employers should encourage staff with genuine concerns to come forward; discovering issues sooner rather than later, and having the chance to address them, is, after all, usually best for business in the long term. But sometimes a disclosure goes beyond an escalation of genuine concern; sometimes, a whistleblower can make their disclosure in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable. Then what?
The Court of Appeal has confirmed that, though it will not always be easy (and may even, in some cases, be impossible), the two can be separated. In particular, on the facts in Kong, the claimant, Ms Kong, had been dismissed, not because she had blown the whistle, but because in doing so she had unnecessarily and expressly called into question the professional awareness of Ms Harding, the individual to whom she had raised her concerns. But...
A Senate Democrat has proposed a bill to repeal the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit, which passed in President Donald Trump’s budget bill last year. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, made numerous ...