Wall Street Journal (09/10/08)

Two U.S. senators, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), say the Department of Labor has violated the "spirit and goals" of a federal law intended to safeguard whistleblowers. The lawmakers urged the agency to stop rejecting claims from workers at subsidiary companies. In a letter to Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, Leahy and Grassley wrote that the "administration--the Department of Labor in particular--has been using overly restrictive interpretation of this law to dismiss a majority of the complaints" filed under the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which contains whistleblower-protection provisions. These provisions were written by Leahy and Grassley, who say that the department has erred in saying that publicly traded firms are not covered under the act. Department records indicate that the government has ruled in favor of corporate whistleblowers 17 times out of 1,273 complaints filed since 2002. Another 841 cases have been dismissed, of which many were made on subsidiary-exclusion grounds. The remainder of the cases have been withdrawn, are pending, or settled. The senators have requested the department provide documentation and a response that backs the agency's position. Until then, they also want Labor to suspend its interpretation that exempts workers of subsidiaries.(www.wsj.com)

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