Okay, this post has nothing to do with the subject line; given the time of year, I just couldn’t resist.

(Maybe we’ll just characterize that episode of WKRP in Cincinnati as a demonstration of PR tactics gone wrong.  See?  There’s a business law hook).

Anyhoo, today I want to call attention to the phenomenon of the fake whistleblowing hotline. 

As compliance becomes an increasingly large part of corporate operations – and a de facto reconfiguration of corporate governance standards – it seems that companies are fond of creating “whisteblowing hotlines” to demonstrate their commitment to compliance with the law.  Public companies, in fact, are required to do so under Sarbanes-Oxley.

Which is why two recent news items are so disturbing.  First, in connection with the Wells Fargo fake account scandal – on which both Anne Tucker and Marcia Narine Weldon recently posted– it turns out that employees who offered tips on the Wells Fargo whistleblowing hotline were quickly fired; meaning that the hotline itself operated as a kind of reverse-ethics test to weed out employees most likely to object to Wells Fargo’s practices.

And it turns out that Wyndham Vacation Ownership did the same thing.  This company, which sells time shares using legally dubious tactics, also has an “integrity hotline” that it uses, apparently, to identify and fire salespeople who have integrity.

It strikes me that these incidents are particularly pernicious.  They represent traps to catch employees who might be troubled by the company’s behavior, while faking compliance with the law – a false compliance that may not easily be detected.  And they imply a certain degree of premeditation: if you set up a hotline and then misuse it, presumably, you know what you’re doing.  I realize that federal and state laws provide penalties for retaliation against whistleblowers; I do wonder if there can be especially tough scrutiny of adverse employment decisions in the wake of utilization of company-established compliance procedures – like, perhaps, a presumption that punitive damages should be awarded.  I’m not an expert in this area, though; does anything like this exist?  Could it?