Potemkin Protection [Whistleblowers and Denial of Due Process]

The Semmelweis Society, named for Ignaz Semmelweis, is an organization founded by American physicians to combat workplace bullying disguised as peer review.

Ignaz Semmelweis, for those who have not heard of him, was the physician who first suggested that obstetricians wash their hands with disinfectant solution before treating each patient and after completing each procedure, as a means of preventing the spread of "childbed fever", a post-partum infection that was common, and often fatal, in the mid-nineteenth century. Although the mortality rate for new mothers dropped sixfold when his proposals were implemented in the hospital where he worked, he was ridiculed by his peers, lashed out at his profession in distress, and ultimately experienced a nervous breakdown. He died in an asylum at the age of 47.

After his death, Pasteur developed and proved the 'germ theory' of disease, and Semmelweis was belatedly recognized as the medical hero he had actually been. Much good it did him then... but many surgical patients and new mothers all over the world, for the last 150 years, owe their lives to this brilliant, vilified, tragic man.

Semmelweis' bullying was savage and direct, but the trigger - his willingness to identify, address, and oppose a destructive practice within his own profession and place of employment - was much the same then as it is for many bullied whistleblowers today.

The modern worker still faces ridicule and loss of standing when he or she identifies, addresses, and attempts to oppose destructive practices within his or her profession or place of employment. However, employers have made considerable progress since the 1850s. In theory, employees are now entitled to 'due process' when standing at risk of losing their jobs; in practice, the available forms of due process in many if not most workplaces today are shams, Potemkin edifices created to give the impression that due process is being followed, while carefully assuring that nothing remotely resembling a genuinely open, impartial assessment of the situation can ever take place.

Consider Bunnatine Greenhouse, demoted when she discovered, then attempted to expose, alleged fraud and abuse involving no-bid government contracts issued to Halliburton and to its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root. Contemplate Teresa Chambers, whose crime was that she honestly indicated that the U.S. Park Police lacked sufficient staff to meet all the security demands being placed on them in the wake of 9-11. Rather than provide her the necessary resources, the Department of the Interior chose to fire her.

Consider the fact that both these women were punished, when all is said and done, for the crime of doing their jobs.

As was Semmelweis.

The late Tim Field, a giant in the field of work abuse, described a number of examples of Potemkin Due Process on his Web site, explaining in detail how Human Resource departments and even their own unions seem to work against the interest of abused employees who turn to them for help. The poem below, taken from the Semmelweis Society's home page, was written by a physician who himself narrowly survived this type of workplace bullying - it captures perfectly the experience of such abused and isolated employees, whatever their profession, wherever employed.

On Sham "Peer Review" --   L.R. Huntoon, M.D.          

Run fast, my little gazelle,
Jump high, dart left and right.
Expect no help;
The herd will graze
And just maintain its poise.
Run fast, my little gazelle,
Jump high, dart left and right.
Sharp claws and teeth
A breath behind,
Your death will make no noise.