A bureaucracy is not a free society. There are no elections for top offices. There is little free speech, and there is no free press for opponents of the current elites. Open opponents of the ruling group are likely to be harassed, demoted or dismissed. There is no independent judiciary to deal with grievances.
In fact, a bureaucracy is rather similar to an authoritarian state.[3] The most important difference is that an authoritarian state can use the army and police against internal opponents. Bureaucratic elites normally can use only methods such as demotion and dismissal — there are no formal systems to use violence. (In a few bureaucracies, such as the army, force can be used officially against dissident employees.) These methods are potent enough for many purposes.
Bureaucratic elites also control information in order to maintain power in relation to other organisations. If a corporation reveals its plans to competitors, it is vulnerable to challenge or even takeover. If a government department reveals its internal operations, it makes itself vulnerable to critics, whether politicians, other government departments or lobby groups.
Finally, bureaucratic elites control information to cover up corruption and bad or dangerous decisions. Tobacco companies covered up research showing the addictiveness of cigarettes. Police cover up bribery and incompetence. Politicians pass laws to prevent release of government documents dealing with “national security” in order to cover up embarrassing actions.
Free speech by employees is a potent threat to bureaucratic elites. It threatens to undermine elite control in the bureaucracy itself, it threatens to weaken bureaucratic elites in relation to other organisations, and it threatens to expose dubious decisions and corrupt practices by the elites themselves. It is precisely for these reasons that free speech for employees is vital as both a method and a goal.
Arguments
Various arguments are put forward to justify the controls imposed on speech by employees. It’s worth examining a few of these.[4]
Employees get paid. They shouldn’t expect anything else. Why not? In other circumstances — outside of bureaucracies — payment is not allowed as an excuse to deny people freedom of speech. Shareholders receive dividends. Do they lose their right to speak out?
Free speech will reveal trade secrets. Perhaps so, but this isn’t such a big deal. Corporations spend large amounts of money on industrial espionage, including hiring staff from other companies as well as covert listening. Free speech would make this process more honest and open.
Anyway, society benefits when good ideas are widely known. Corporate innovation can be improved when ideas “leak” out.[5] Overall, secrecy is not an advantage, even for corporations.
Industrial societies have the capacity to produce plenty of goods for everyone. Overproduction is a far greater problem than underproduction. Therefore, one of the most important aims of work should be to provide a satisfying experience for the workers.
Employees agree to keep quiet as part of their voluntarily accepted employment contract. The so-called employment contract is quite one-sided. Few workers have easy mobility. They don’t have the financial resources available to employers.
Employers have a right to run their enterprises the way they want. Certainly not. The “rights” of employers are restricted in lots of ways. Laws prevent hiring of some people, such as children; laws prevent hazardous working conditions; laws prevent indiscriminate impacts on the environment. Enterprises are part of society, and impacts on the society are taken seriously — including impacts on stockholders, clients and other enterprises.
When there is control over speech, those who decide on and exercise the control have power over others. This power is corrupting. It can be used to cover up abuses by elites and to attack those who might challenge the elites. This is precisely how it is used in practice.
Most people believe that “good speech” — speech that is informed and enlightened — should be encouraged. Elites argue that they must control the “bad speech” of others so that only “good speech” is allowed, namely only things that have their approval. But there is a different way to challenge “bad speech” — by challenging it with dialogue and debate. Only by encouraging people’s capacity for critical thinking and argumentation will “good speech” become the genuine voice of the people.
Whistleblowing
Generally speaking, whistleblowing[6] is an act of dissent. Researcher Bill De Maria gives the following more specific definition. Whistleblowing is:
— an open disclosure about significant wrongdoing
— made by a concerned citizen totally or predominantly motivated by notions of public interest,
— who has perceived the wrongdoing in a particular role
— who initiates the disclosure of her or his own free will
— to a person or agency capable of investigating the complaint and facilitating the correction of wrongdoing.[7]
In this narrow sense, whistleblowers are usually government or corporate employees who speak out to expose corruption or dangers to the public or environment. Whistleblowers thus practise free speech as a method of exposing problems that they perceive in their workplace. This seems to be a good thing: what could be more worthy than pointing out corruption or hazards so that they can be dealt with?
The problem is that whistleblowing is commonly a threat to powerful interests, typically the employee’s superiors. Rather than rectifying the problem, it is common for whistleblowers to come under attack. They are threatened, ostracised, harassed, transferred, reprimanded, vilified, referred to psychiatrists, demoted, dismissed and blacklisted.
David Obendorf was a veterinary pathologist who worked in Launceston, Tasmania for the state’s Department of Primary Industry and Fisheries (DPIF). He became concerned about government cutbacks to disease surveillance services, which he believed were important for preventing outbreaks of disease among stock in local farms. His public statements were not welcomed by his superiors. He was transferred across the state to Hobart into a policy position for which he was not trained or suited. Then he was transferred back to Launceston into an office with no computer, no light fitting and broken castors on the chair. More seriously, the information was spread around the locality that he was gay (true), that his partner had died of AIDS (true), that he had AIDS (false) and that his statements were a product of “AIDS dementia” (false). The rumour-mongering undermined his credibility in the conservative rural area in which he worked.
The curious thing about this case is that everything Obendorf said had been acknowledged in DPIF’s own documents. The difference was that he was making the points accessible to the public in talks and statements to the media.
For years, rumours had circulated that some Australian diplomats, especially in southeast Asia, regularly had sex with children, but little or no action was taken to investigate or stop the practice. Alastair Gaisford, an employee in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in Canberra, Australia, was one of a small number of DFAT workers who spoke out about paedophilia in the foreign service. In 1996, DFAT officials took disciplinary action against Gaisford. As well, they asked Federal Police to raid Gaisford’s home to collect documents.
3
Deena Weinstein,
4
Many of these points are taken from David W. Ewing,
5
Stuart Macdonald, “Nothing either good or bad: industrial espionage and technology transfer,”
6
One excellent treatment is Myron Peretz Glazer and Penina Migdal Glazer,
7
William De Maria, “Quarantining dissent: the Queensland public sector ethics movement,”