A Dish Best Served Cold: Dish Found To Have Blacklisted Employee Who Disclosed Fraud

If you are debating between the Dish and cable, this might help you make up your mind. Dish has been hit with a $250,000 for retaliating against an employee who actually disclosed that a vendor was ripping off the company. OSHA found that Dish had blacklisted the whistleblower for revealing fraudulent invoices and testifying at a deposition. Notably, there is no indication that, even after OSHA found such outrageous conduct by company officials, anyone has been fired for the blacklisting of the employee. Dish was also found recently to be the worst and “meanest” company to work for. CEO Charlie Ergen appears not to be bother in the slightest by this record as a bad corporate actor. Ergen’s company seems to follow the Italian view that “revenge is a dish best served cold.”

OSHA enforces the whistleblower provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley and 21 other statutes that protect employees in reporting violations of airline, commercial motor carrier, consumer product, environmental, financial reform, food safety, health-care reform, nuclear, pipeline, worker safety, public transportation agency, maritime and securities laws.

Dish was found to have violated the anti-retaliatory provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act by blacklisting the employee who worked in Dish’s marketing department between March 2007 and November 2008. Here is how OSHA described it:

The employee worked in DISH’s marketing department between March 2007 and November 2008. In the summer of 2008, the complainant notified his superior that a vendor was defrauding DISH by charging for work it had not done. He filed a complaint with OSHA in August 2011 after learning that he had subsequently been blacklisted three times after leaving DISH Network. These included a negative job reference, DISH’s refusal to do business with the complainant’s subsequent employer and its refusal to carry a satellite channel after learning that the complainant represented the channel. OSHA’s investigation found merit to the complaint and has ordered DISH Network to take corrective action.

Robert Kulick, OSHA’s regional administrator in New York noted that “Blacklisting is a particularly insidious form of retaliation that can follow workers and even cost them new jobs. It is not only an unacceptable practice, it’s illegal.”

What is most striking is that Dish would appear to prefer a vendor ripping off the company than an employee who embarrassed superiors with such disclosures.

Then again Dish comes with a free Hooper . . . and a blacklist.

Source: OSHA