Legal Updates

In order to enjoy legal protection for whistleblowers the employee is required to contact a competent body to handle the complaint

October 31, 2021
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A terminated kitchen worker claimed he was entitled to protection as "exposing corruption" against the background of his repeated complaints regarding particularly high heat in the kitchen, which poses a health hazard.

The Court rejected the employee's claim regarding the prohibition of dismissal under the Corruption Whistleblowers Law. The law protects against harassment and persecution and even dismissal of an employee who complains about illegal conduct in the workplace, or his refusal to perform an illegal act, through the setting of punitive damages or the issuance of injunctions preventing dismissal. The protection will also be given in the case where the employee believed that the act of corruption was committed in the workplace, even if it turned out in practice that the acts did not result in corruption and provided that the employee did not have to know about it. The motive for the complaint does not have to be a moral motive and a complaint that stems from a personal motive or one that involves altruistic motives and personal motives can entitle the complainant to the protection of the law, as long as he meets the test of the truth of the said complaint. The employee must try and solve the problem he is complaining about within the organization, before contacting external parties, except in exceptional cases where the employer's illegal behavior does not first allow internal contact. Here, even if the employee complained internally about something and even though the employee believed there was a sanitary hazard, he did not then turn to the competent authority to accept the complaint or competent to investigate or investigate the matter used as the subject of the complaint and therefore no protection under law.