When you are a whistleblower, and you expose your employer for placing you in a position that you are not qualified for, it would make sense if your employer wanted to find you a different position. However, what would you think if your employer placed you in a different position for which you were just as unqualified as you were for the first job that they gave you? That certainly would be confusing, yet this appears to be what happened to a whistleblower who revealed that he didn’t meet the standards outlined in Navy regulations for the position that his manager placed him in at an aircraft maintenance facility.
When the man worked at the Fleet Readiness Center (FRC-East), his job was to administratively release aircraft for flight and make sure that all required inspections and maintenance got completed. When he made it known to the public that he was expected to do work that, according to Navy regulations, he was unqualified to do, he experienced difficulty and reprisal. The man worked with his attorney to pursue legal action intended to mitigate threats of future reprisals, and his employer offered him a new aeronautical engineering technician position. The man took the job and hoped that his concerns would fade into the background as he started in his new role as a metrology-engineering technician.
Unfortunately, the man found out that he is just as unqualified for his new position as he was for his previous position. The work of a metrology-engineering technician involves calibrating highly technical equipment, and he falls short of the standards outlined in Navy regulations for qualifications for that job. For example, he should hold a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering or physical science. He should also have completed a four-year metrology calibration apprentice training program, or he should have the equivalent skills that those programs would provide. In addition to those things, he should have four years of experience and extensive knowledge of the aircraft and their various systems as well as the methods for calibrating those systems, among other things. Just reading the list of qualifications for that position is enough to make a non-technical person’s head spin, and even for someone who has an engineering background, it is an intimidating list. However, when you consider the nature of what the person who does that job is doing, calibrating highly sensitive and very technical equipment on military aircraft, it is easy to see just how little room for error is in the work that the metrology-engineering technician performs. Simply stated, it is a violation of Navy regulations to employ that man in the position of a metrology-engineering technician. He does not have the educational background, training, or experience to meet the requirements outlined in the regulations.
Barrett Law PLLC: Providing Support for Mississippi Whistleblowers
Whistleblowers can experience retaliation in a variety of ways, including reassignment to less desirable or otherwise inappropriate work. This type of retaliation is subtler than some of the other forms of retaliation, so many people might not even realize that it is happening. To learn more about whistleblower protection claims, call the Mississippi Whistleblower Attorneys at Barrett Law PLLC today at 1 (800) 707-9577 for an initial consultation.