It’ll be interesting to see what comes of Volkswagen’s move to offer amnesty to all its bargaining-unit employees in hopes of uncovering just who was/is behind its emissions-cheating scandal.
According to a letter that went out Thursday from Herbert Diess, chief executive of the division that produces Volkswagen brand cars, employees have until Nov. 30 to come forward with information about who was responsible for installing software in 11 million diesel vehicles that disguised nitrogen-oxide output.
The letter, reviewed and reported on by the New York Times, says “people who provided information would not be fired or face damage claims [but] the company could not shield employees from criminal charges.”
In other words, the amnesty isn’t really designed for the really bad guys, “but rather, for the midlevel people who may have, without even knowing it, some relevant information,” Mike Koehler, a law professor at Southern Illinois University, told the Times.
It’s also, according to another legal source for that story — Alexandra Wrange, president of Trace International in Annapolis, Md. — “a tacit admission … that the usual reporting channels have been ineffective.”
You might call it a kind of pulling-out-all-the-stops kind of move, above and beyond the more commonplace no-retaliation policies contained in most whistleblowing programs, says Allan Weitzman, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based partner with Proskauer, whose list of specialties includes whistleblowing.
(At Volkswagen, it was an internal whistleblower who uncovered the false carbon-dioxide claims that the company made public last week. “German news media reports have said that internal investigators looking into the emissions-cheating software, which came to light in September, have been hampered by a reluctance among employees to come forward,” the Times story states.)
Weitzman joins in the general chorus of employment attorneys who consider Diess’ move new and different, to say the least.
“I know I’ve never heard of [this kind of corporate amnesty],” he says. “But these are unusual circumstances, and [as pointed out in the Times article as well], Volkswagen wants to show to governmental agencies that it has done everything it can to solve this problem; well, amnesty is pretty broad … I’d say ‘Yes, they have gone about as far as possible’ ” in this endeavor.
Is it the right move? Weitzman thinks so.
“I think it’ll work, too, if it has the support of the union, meaning [very simply] that the people who look to unions as their source of job security will participate in the amnesty program if their union supports it,” he says.
“And the union should support this,” he adds, “because the future of the union is tied to the future of Volkswagen, and if Volkswagen cannot solve this problem, it’s going to result in the unemployment of many, many union members.”
