McCaskill Whistleblower Protection Bill Unanimously Passes U.S. Senate
Press Release
The U.S. Senate recently passed a bill from U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill to extend whistleblower protections for all federal government grantees, subgrantees, and subcontractors, and make permanent these protections for all federal contractors. The bill also prohibits contractors from being reimbursed for legal fees accrued in their defense against retaliation claims by whistleblowers.
"Even though we have whistleblower protections in place for government employees, there are thousands of contractors in the federal government workforce who still aren't afforded those same basic protections, and thousands more who are going to see their protections disappear if we don't make them permanent before the end of the year" said McCaskill, a senior member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "Whistleblower are our first line of defense against waste and misconduct--and our legislation simply extends those protections to all whistleblowers in contracting forces who are working side-by-side each day with government employees, but without the same protections--and I'm looking forward to working with my colleagues in the House to get this commonsense bill across the finish line."
Currently, a pilot program set to expire applies whistleblower protections to contractors, grant recipients, subcontractors, but not to employees of subgrantees--even though the federal government distributes billions in grant funding each year, much of which gets passed through to other organizations.
McCaskill's legislation makes permanent this pilot program and extends protections to subgrantees. The legislation cleared a key committee hurdle this spring when it was approved by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In 2015, McCaskill successfully included a provision in the annual defense bill extending whistleblower protections to all Department of Defense contractors, subcontractors, grantees and subgrantees.
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