A complaint about your own treatment at work can still count as whistleblowing in the public interest.
“A complaint about your own working terms is not automatically outside whistleblowingMaking a disclosure about wrongdoing in your workplace, such as a health and safety risk, a criminal act, or a miscarriage of justice. If the disclosure qualifies as protected, the law gives you signi... protection, especially when it affects a group.”
A complaint about your own working terms is not automatically outside whistleblowing protection, especially when it affects a group.
- Put shared workplace concerns in writing, and note who else is affected.
- Say plainly why you believe the issue matters beyond just you, such as fairness for the team or a safety angle.
- Do not assume that a personal or contractual complaint disqualifies you from protection.
The situation
A lorry driver at a haulage depot, together with three other drivers, put in a written complaint about their treatment at work. Their central grievanceA formal complaint raised by an employee against their employer, triggering a legal obligation to investigate and respond. was the unfair allocation of overtime, which they said breached their contracts of employment. Part of the concern was that drivers who were most careful about vehicle health and safety checks were the ones being passed over for overtime. The complaint also referred to favouritism, bullyingRepeated, unreasonable behaviour towards you at work that undermines you or damages your dignity, such as persistent criticism, exclusion, humiliation, or intimidation. Bullying on its own is not auto... and the stress this caused. After raising it, the driver was later dismissed, and he argued the dismissal was because he had made a protected disclosureThe legal term for a qualifying whistleblowing report. For a disclosure to be protected it must relate to specific categories of wrongdoing, you must reasonably believe it is true, and in most cases i....
What the tribunal found
The employment tribunalAn independent court that hears disputes between employees and employers. It is free to bring a claim as a claimant, and most hearings take place in public. had struck the whistleblowing part of the claim out, treating a complaint about the drivers' own contractual terms as incapable of being in the public interest. The Employment Appeal Tribunal disagreed and allowed that part of the claim to proceed. A matter that is personal to a workerA legal category that sits between employee and self-employed. Workers are entitled to certain rights including national minimum wage, paid holiday, and protection from unlawful deduction from wages, ... is not automatically outside the public interest. Where a complaint is raised by a group of workers about a shared issue in their terms of employment, the reasonable belief that it is in the public interest can be made out. The point could not be shut down at an early stage.
Underwood v Wincanton plc | UKEAT/0163/15/RN; [2015] All ER (D) 189 | Employment Appeal Tribunal | 27 August 2015