Whistleblower laws, as the moniker might imply, are pieces of legislation existing at the federal and state level intended to encourage employees to bring a stop to corruption and mismanagement. On the typical assembly line, a person may physically pull or blow a whistle to halt production in order to correct a faulty production process.

Likewise, the federal government has passed legislation to provide incentives, as well as protection, to government employees who witness co-workers, and, now more than ever, managers, who are behaving in ways that can be construed as an abuse of their position, or as an outright violation of the law.

Increasingly, the term whistleblower has come to be associated with somebody who informs on a group of trusting co-workers. However, it is exactly this type of connotation that whistleblower laws seek to remove from the mind of the public. Government bureaucracy and statefinanced corporations can at times appear to operate above the law, outlasting administrations, evading the discipline of elective review, and oiling their machinery while largely hiding from the public eye. Therefore, it is especially important to make it possible for courageous employees who find themselves entangled in a business or department with its own agenda in mind to be able to speak out on behalf of the larger interests of voters, to whom these entities are responsible. Since an employee who decides to report illegal or unreasonable behavior to the authorities regularly finds himself to be the subject of intense scrutiny, or even fabricated accusations, if he continues to stay at his place of employment, it is necessary to make the act of bringing unethical performance to light appealing enough to outweigh the disincentives posed by angry co-workers, punitive bosses, and a national culture that can frown on disloyalty, even if it is for all the right reasons. In line with this reasoning, whistleblower laws often provide the employee with a percentage of the money considered 'saved' by his honesty. Moreover, a settlement or court award reached as a result of the disclosure of these problematic issues is often paid to the successful whistleblower to compensate for the risk he has assumed.

From another perspective, the employee is simultaneously given protection against undue dismissal and other retaliatory measures that a corporation or department might privately take against the plaintiff after official investigations are underway. These incentives were meant to make whistleblower laws both a progressive reform and effective legislation, so much so that the lucrative prospects of being a whistleblower have not only brought many reluctant employees forward, but also have encouraged some to go into the business of poaching through phonebooks for dubious employers with an eye towards reporting them to government investigators and collecting their prize once a decision is reached.

1. Whistleblower laws were put in place

(A) to discourage employees from reporting corruption in the workplace
(B) to foster the connotation that employee reporting is disloyal
(C) to ensure that all corrupt practices are discovered
(D) to save money
(E) to protect employees from the negative consequences of reporting malfeasance



2. The added measures to provide whistleblowers with pecuniary incentives and protection against unfair dismissal imply that

(A) lawmakers were concerned that legislation aimed at reforming bureaucracy would be ineffective without financial inducements
(B) the government should offer corporations more funding in exchange for reducing internal costs through better management and quarterly reviews
(C) many lawmakers were whistleblowers themselves at one point
(D) co-workers will be more understanding if they realize that reporting is not the product of disloyalty but of business acumen and private incentive
(E) government bureaucracies do not need to respond to legislative pressure



3. The need for whistleblowers to help control the behavior of bureaucracy is because

(A) a customary independent third party review process is mendatory
(B) lack of competition with other bureaucracies may corrupt those bureaucracies
(C) the incompetence of bureaucracy should be well understood by lawmakers
(D) at times bureaucracies function outside the discipline of elective review
(E) a bureaucracy's organizational mission should be separate from the mission of the federal government



4. In the passage, the effectiveness of whistleblower laws is demonstrated by

(A) the number of corporations with federal contracts who have adopted the cost plus system
(B) the high prosecution rate of managers who abuse their power and embezzle money
(C) the inclusion of practical measures to make the legislation realistic
(D) the willingness of most people to consider whistleblowers as patriots
(E) the eagerness of a few employees to become deliberate investigators of corrupt corporations



5. It can be inferred from the passage that lawmakers viewed a need for so many practical incentives to be part of whistleblower legislation because
(A) there have been laws passed but they have not had the full expected reach
(B) federal employees make decisions out of self-interest more readily than out of a sense of purpose
(C) corrupt bureaucracies result in a culture of corruption among all employees
(D) federal bureaucracies are large and unwieldy
(E) the federal government may be able to change a bureaucracy's leaders but not all of its employees



6. The phrase 'oiling their machinery' is probably a metaphor for:

(A) Refusing to obey federal mandates
(B) Writing laws
(C) Proposing laws
(D) Pitting state governments against federal governments
(E) Running the day to day operations of an organization


7. The attitude of the author towards whistleblower legislation can be described as:

(A) Suspicious but relenting
(B) Supportive and objective
(C) Agreeable but nonplussed
(D) Implacable but journalistic
(E) Prohibitive and histrionic



8. The word 'plaintiff' most nearly means

(A) applicant
(B) pretender
(C) claimant
(D) dissenter
(E) perpetrator