My fellow Canadians,

Employee rights protect us from abuses by our employers. However, many of us still must stay at these jobs after these abuses. We are not given the luxury of leaving our jobs because we cannot afford to miss a single pay day.

Employee rights also mandate that employers not engage in retaliatory action for reporting abuses. However, as the policies in place require any report be shared with the employer without anonymity of the reporter, retaliation is almost fostered.

The government will not be at our places of employment to protect us against retaliation. When model employees who report abuses are dismissed for their reports, the most the government will do is look at paperwork by the employers. This gives employers the chance to create their own version of events, as well as to fabricate events that make the reporter look merely like a disgruntled employee. In my own case, I was a model employee, producing well above what was expected of any employee, but I reported abuses and suddenly I had been spoken to multiple times about needing improvement by some manager I had never actually met. This was the grounds for dismissal on paper.

Employers only have employee rights at heart when it benefits them. To disallow any anonymity in reports is to condemn the reporter to retaliation. The government needs to change this policy. Surely the government should be allowed to know who is reporting, but the employer should only be granted access to this information if it would assist in correcting the abuses.