Merged: Joe Eakins: Brave?....or....

[fridge magnet]

How exactly does what this guy did fall under the banner of being a "whistleblower"?

Wikipedia says
A whistleblower is a person who raises a concern about alleged wrongdoing occurring in an organization or body of people. Joe made it quite clear what he thinks is wrong with the Jet* plan.

OK fridgey, over to you. Put your name to a similar article if you believe it was ok, then see what happens.

I wouldn’t put my name to an article for a few reasons:
- I don’t work for Jet* and didn’t have an appreciation of what was going on until Joe hit the press.
- I never would have imagined it to be an effective strategy. But Jet*’s uncool response and Joe and AIPA’s resulting media coverage proved I would have been wrong about that. I would have expected a cool and confident response from Jet* and the issue to die very quickly.
- Joe has already done it! For me or his colleagues to follow it up would look very much like illegal industrial action which would definately be a bad move.

I have seen guys sacked for theft and gotten their jobs back by union intervention. The fact that Jetstar gave his job back does not mean he was right, it merely means that his reinstatement was negotiated with the union, and all negotiations are give and take.

Its not the union intervention and give and take that gets their job back. Its the expertise/force the union brings that highlights the employeees rights and the employers obligations UNDER THE LAW. The company eats humble pie because it costs them less than proceeding. QF have a long history of losing unfair dismissal cases for being unreasonable or harsh.

Anyone who wants to increase their understanding of unfair dismissal law and why Joe probably got his job back might like the following light reading. http://www.lexisnexis.com.au/aus/pro...s/ELB_13_8.pdf

He is very lucky to get his job back, but if it was me I would not have accepted those terms and put my name to the final newspiece. I would have fallen on my sword, moved on to other things, and held my head high.

I'm glad Joe chose to stay. His public statement was probably necesarry in law - one of the tests in unfair dismissal is whether a relationship can reasonably continue between the parties. He will be useful to help keep the industry sane. Hopefully you'll move onto another industry with an attitude like that - your not much use here!