New whistleblower protections for New York employees took effect on January 26, 2022. The statutory amendments included a requirement that employers post notices informing their employees of the legal protections. The New York Department of Labor issued a model whistleblower notice for this purpose on February 14, 2022. Employers should now have this notice posted “conspicuously in easily accessible and well-lighted places customarily frequented by employees and applicants for employment.”

New York Whistleblower Protections

For a full discussion on the recent changes to New York’s workplace whistleblower laws, read our previous article.

What’s in the Whistleblower Notice?

The Department of Labor didn’t get very creative in preparing the model whistleblower notice. It’s essentially just a word-for-word recitation of the whistleblower statute. It doesn’t even have a clever name. It’s just the “Notice of Employee Rights, Protections, and Obligations Under Labor Law Section 740.”

Next Steps

If you haven’t already, post the whistleblower notice in your workplaces along with other employee rights notices. You can download the notice from the DOL here.

But, you may not want to stop at just posting the notice. Note that the new whistleblower protections are a significant expansion of previous employee rights. They substantially increase the scope of potential claims, as employers are prohibited from engaging in a limitless scope of “retaliatory action” against employees who engage in any covered activities. Consider appropriate training of supervisors to reduce the risk of conduct that could produce whistleblower complaints.