Should employees of government contractors have the same whistleblower protections as federal employees?

Yes

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by Floyd Wilson

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Of course employees of government contractors should have whistleblower protections for reporting either fraud or waste identified as a part of their jobs. It only makes sense to make the protections extend to the people who are working as an extension of our federal work force. Who better to see, evaluate and then report the problems and costs of fraud and abuse as well as government waste.

Over the last eight years, the American people have experienced case after case of government waste, abuse of powers and ineptitude in the management of some of our Federal Programs. While the numbers are not in, whisleblowers have identified billions of dollars bilked from our FEMA appropriations to help the victims of Katrina. The war in IRAQ is plagued with waste and corruption and in many cases, government contract employees have reported the abuse and theft of our tax dollars. Health Care Fraud and Abuse is estimated to take billions of our federal health care dollars, but whistleblower lawsuits filed against both public and private healthcare systems may be making a dent in this theft and deterring future fraud and abuse schemes.

While there is a system in place under the Civil False Claims Act to be protected for filing whistleblower actions, the process seems to be overly complicated, time consuming and in a lot of cases a "career ender" for the whistleblower. For some reason, whistleblowers are viewed as "tattle-tales or snitches" as opposed to people who are attempting to fix what could either be out and out theft of Federal monies or plain waste. There seems to be a watering down of business ethics that crosses both public and private sector employees. In many of the high profile cases such as ENRON and HealthSouth, corporate executive greed has gone overboard and while many are prosecuted, the resulting fines and jail sentences seem to be minuscule to the amount of money stolen.

Government employees and government contract employees should be held to the highest standards of ethics and accountability. These employees should be given strict guidelines mandating their responsibilities in reporting both fraud and waste and should be rewarded when reporting fraud or waste and punished severely when involved in theft or waste of Federal dollars.

If we do not include government contractors in the protections of whistleblower actions the same as Federal employees, then we have no one to blame for the huge theft and waste cases we see almost weekly in our newspapers. While "making sense" doesn't always apply to some of the actions in our Federal, State and Local governments, it is imperative that we stop the theft of our tax dollars by encouraging whistleblower actions and praising those who bring them to light.

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