What Does the Whistleblower Have to Prove?
There are three central elements to an ERA whistleblower claim: • the employee is engaged in protected activity; • the employer took adverse employment action against the employee; and • the adverse employment action against the employee was caused at least in part by the protected activity. What is Protected Activity? An employee engages in “protected activity” when he or she raises concerns – internally or to regulators, and maybe even to the media – about issues of nuclear safety. An employee is protected only when complaining about practices that he or she reasonably believes to implicate nuclear safety, and not when complaining about myriad other issues. For example, an employee who reports a non-nuclear safety problem (e.g., a tripping hazard) is not protected by the ERA because the occupational-safety concern the employee is raising, however important, does not implicate nuclear safety. On the other hand, an employee who complains about the nuclear-safety impact of short staffin
