we talked a lot on the show about whistle blowing and governments and in banking. it seems that both of those worlds concrete, a perfect storm of wrong doing that forces those with the conscience to stand up and say something. but what about in big corporations? what about in the biggest company in the world, when the bottom line is profits, nearly every company will cut corners, but sometimes they'll do it at a cost of the health and the safety of their workers and to the public's privacy. and for a whistleblower that's just not going to work. i'm john kerry. ok, welcome to the whistle blowers. 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 actually cubic was a highly motivated, highly educated tech with when she began working at apple in 2015. she was hired as a program manager. she was making good money and she had a great deal of responsibility. an incident and her personal life where there was

an environmental danger in her apartment complex a tool and her 2 environmental issues at work too. when apple announced internally that it was going to conduct something called a vapor intrusion test, she objected, saying that it was unsafe for employees. spoiler alert, she was right, of course, but the company pushed back hard shortly thereafter. ashley fainted at work and did not know why this contributed to her concerns that apple had not properly tested the work side for contaminants. she also believed apple had not sufficiently informed employees of the possible health problems from chemical exposure. she was told that apple had no legal requirement to do so, but ashley was on to something. as it turned out, the building in which she worked for apple was built on a toxic waste sites that was supposed to been managed by the defense giant northrop grumman, a carcinogen, called try coral. ethylene was known to been disposed of there and had leaked into

the soil. even the government admitted that the ground water at the site was contaminated. a government study in 2019 found the issue had been addressed, but then in 2021, employees were found to have been exposed to poisonous fumes through cracks. and the floor actually filed complaints with the environmental protection agency and the national labor relations board. she also filed a whistleblower, a complaint with the occupational safety and health administration and with the u. s. department of labor. and when she approached apple about correcting all of these problems, she was told her only option was simply to work from home. more whistle blowing was to follow, actually complained that some of apple's internal policies on employee privacy, on the privacy of the public, and on the retention of documents and user data were unethical. she even filed complaints in the u. k. with the data protection information commissioner's office

in the counter part office in brussels and didn't dublin with the data protection commissioner. those complaints are still under investigation. not only did ashley not receive any help or satisfaction from apple, the company began to harass her. in response, she took the twitter to air her complaints. consequently, she was retaliated against repeatedly and was transferred in the end. she was fired . some of the complaints actually made are still being investigated on others. the national labor relations board found that she had told the truth and the apple had overstepped its bounds, had retaliated against her and had deprived employees of their constitutional rights. i have one of the meet ashley gilbert for a long time and i'm very pleased to have her with us on the show actually welcome. it's great having you. thank you so much for having me. i'm excited to meet you too . oh, the pleasure is mine, and my goodness, there is so much to ask you when you decided to blow the whistle on wrong doing it,

apple. you really decided to blow the whistle. tell us about how this whole thing got started. it was all about environmental issues at the beginning. what made you initially decide to make that complaint? yeah, it turned into something very, very complicated, but it started into something very simple, which was, i moved into a new apartment complex and i got very ill immediately. i was on short term disability. i thought i could be dying doctors or screaming me forbid, or misses. i had 7 months later either that or the apartment was built on a toxic waste plan up site. and then 2 years later, i find out that my employer at that time apple was operating a secret, somebody, conductor manufacturing plant outside our windows venting a bunch of sol, them into our windows. and so there was solid exposure that was the root cause of my illness. and through that experience, i learned about the split up sites. i learned about how to do that. and there's a lot of ways whether you're at work or just, you know,

in your home that you can be so specific. make you very ill. i assumed i was not the only one in the background and i was not so i under to try to figure out what was going on and or put it to government agencies. so we finally got to the bottom of it. it is being investigated. how was implicated, but through this i kind of became when i call an armchair expert cindy's cleanup site environmental laws. so all about what's happening in 2020, i was not satisfied with the government response. and so i ended up publishing an extra day. what happened to me and asking for more intervention? and the beginning of 2021. and right at that time, an email comes into my inbox at apple saying that they want to test their office for me for intrusion. and that's all it says. but i had become an expert at this point, so i knew exactly what that term and i'm and yeah, i had briefly been informed that my apple office was something called a super sunday site by

a friend who broke the or not apple. so i live in that office since 2017 and she's like, you know, that's a really bad super fun to site to kind of explain that it was about solution and toxic waste. but i kind of put it aside. um and, but that all, you know, the lights went off when i saw that email, that what they're saying is they want to test and see if that toxic waste from superfund site in the groundwater and slow was pushing up indoor, indoor air when we were at our desk and we were breathing it in. and through this experience, i also learned that and silicon valley to the most common chemicals are tracked for o. s o n t. rush citizens and very, very dangerous. so from that email, i start looking through the documentation, start asking questions, i'm very dissatisfied with all the answers, i'm say, not just from my employers oversight of the office, but how the been overseeing it, which is not at all that kind of neglected, it weren't paying attention and then as soon as i start asking questions and

identifying issues which the later confirmed all my concerns were correct and they have the same concerns. apple started just, you know, trying to shut me out, retaliate and told me not to tell anyone else. they didn't want me to tell the government what they were doing. um, so. okay, awesome to choose from there. good lord, we shouldn't say to that a superfund site is a site that is so toxic. it's so dangerous that the environmental protection and ministration has to come in at a cost sometimes of billions of dollars to try to clean it up. but like any government bureaucracy, sometimes they do a great job. sometimes they do a terrible job. and it sounds like in this case they did a terrible job. a very interesting you what you said is correct, but like the add another angle, which we appreciate if someone that works in the federal government. um, there's a lot of politics about funding and to clean it up and especially considering

a lot of these sites even if not directly or d, o d, right? there's a lot of different factors. it was a lot of military operations. so how does the federal government force itself to clean up stuff when they don't want to? how do they force corporations do when corporations, ultimately, if they're big enough to just say no, i'm not going to do anything. so it's a lot of compromise influence. some funding, some tax, their dollars goes into trying to help clean this up, which is very demoralizing when you will be these huge companies with so much money, made a mass and should just clean it up. and it seems like the rest of your whistle blowing happened in very rapid succession after your initial revelations about the environmental issues and the fact that apple was literally sitting on this toxic superfund site. what then led to your decision to make additional disclosures? yeah, so i wonder this experience even starting the apartment and seeing the response of the government, you know what i just said. now i'm kind of thing of stockholm syndrome. of like let me explain why they tolerate companies to not clean this stuff up. but when it is

all started, it was shocking to me that you can have this kind of pollution that science and medicine show can cause cancer until people don't even tell people they do, the very bare minimum of cleaning it up. and then when you raise concerns, even when you are very ill and all my symptoms turned out to be solvent exposure, all of them were diagnosed by an occupational exposure doctor is like, oh that is solid research. you don't have a mask, you don't cancer, you don't have an aneurism without, you know, all the other stuff i screamed for. but even then the responses were very fair to me that these company isn't even the government didn't really care if i lived or died. it was just kind of business and as i start looking into that more, this is a huge issue, especially for folks that don't have a lot of resources for me already from the discrimination along toxic hot spots or, and areas with black and native people. people living in poverty, but even less is so it's kind of like a big home,

sacrifice them for the use of property or just to let some people that i asked me that was so jarling and upsetting and fundamentally changed me in the way that i viewed my relationship with these companies, including my employer. so when my employers response to my questions about my office, especially after everything i've just gone through and they knew it was chemical exposure to uh, it shows me, they don't care if i live or die either. and in fact, they want to cover it up and make sure i don't tell any of my co workers that are housed to be a risk just because a liability. so for me, you shifted somebody of find me where i lost any of that, you know, assume good intent or cognitive dissonance you have at work when you don't necessarily align with your employer. so use basically something kind of upset to you leave it to the side and i was just done because they were, they saw me completely disposable i work, you know, 80 hour weeks for nearly 7 years. this company i did everything i could to try to

help them with their products and problems in teams and make things better. and they literally are just like, don't tell other people that they're going to be cancer too. so as they started retaliating, i really, i had no rose colored glasses left and i'd love to know what, what was the reaction from your colleagues. you'd been at up at apple for almost 6 years. were people supportive? after all this, this directly impacted them where they helpful to you. did they pull you aside privately and offer support or did they just put their heads down and walk away and try to protect themselves? so i was very unique and st. cultured by. there's not comparable to many other companies. if any they find themselves with extreme secrecy. they brag about all their x, the i a and say they're like the private sector, c i a. and so they really, the culture is based on not sure information, probably not turn information with each other, not owing things. i'm pretty sure they are using the id control system for our

disclosures when they were coughing in a row, you know, so it's very parental eyes. and that doesn't mean that most of our friends are coworkers, right? when you're told anything about your work and they started giving the service to jail for basically we can be you just kind of keep an internal. so most of my friends were my co workers and the ones that were along with all of this are very supportive to they were outrage just along with me as everything that we're seeing . but then apples telling me not to talk to my co workers to not tell anyone about what's going on. and i go along with it for a little while because i was terrified of them. sure. here the but then i kind of break when there retaliating more clearly covering up the environmental issues really probably not until a day. and so i kinda the 1st taking a public public just to the communication to the company. and it's also a for apple that was public because they're so secretive and they're just an outdoor and the people who also have these work stories of trying to raise real

concerns and just being immediately reevaluated upon and being covered up. so many people don't to tell anyone. so there is a huge response there that was positive, but then there was also backslash from a lot of people. that for some reason are used to or rely on the system of secrecy saying you're leaving your concerns about work conditions. don't tell anyone there's already backlash there. and then when i was ordered to go in public in august, when i went on twitter and just start sharing stuff. so it's clear my employer was doing nothing helpful. and just mostly in this area. yes. so i, there are no documents and time you know the code, what's going on i, there's also a mix. there were more co workers that team ford hopefully as well, and also share their stories. but then a lot of backlash, a lot of smears, wanted division, and apples and fueling that, of course, for the last couple years to try to get everyone to find each other. because if we have any hope of actually improving things as workers, we need to organize. so they seem to be doing everything they can to not have us do that and all of their sectors, new retail, isn't it?

i'm sorry to interrupt you in, in the intern between your revelations and the corporate decision to try to push you out. what was it like for you inside apple? were you kept at arm's length? did the company try to implement any changes based on your revelations or did they want to fight from the beginning human resources, for example, which was supposed to protect you? certainly didn't protect you. i'll also point out that apple ceo, tim cook, sent out a company wide email about you, that at least to my eyes seems like a friend. yes. oh gosh. that was one of the reasons i think i didn't even think that my installations would go anywhere. so it was immediately just documenting everything kind of done and this would be lost to them. i would have to take the public. was there a real concerns about face the, my bosses only, not the telling one of my safety concerns. i go to h r and this is like the bare minimum of what a shower should do is like explain labor laws to executive. but in fact,

she were telling me it's against me openly and refuses to explain the safety productions to him that employees can talk about safety in when she's doing that. it just, it kind of showed me, okay, everything's set up now to push me out. there not seem, it doesn't matter what my position was, what i complex, what my now you know, network the months. so your directors and the fees didn't matter. they were going to assume me, destroy me, push me out, find ways to fire me. and so they kept doing that and that's, you know, come out. that's a very strong pattern from them. um and yeah, i closer to me getting fired i the bosses did it 2 boxes. one of them was giving me a bunch of projects that were set up a little let's make everyone upsetting me. and then the other ones are moving me from projects and emails and not responding to my emails, which are 2 of the things that they love to do and they situations. so yeah, i be removed from even my actual responsibilities. i'm being repeatedly told not

have to go work or is not the organized. and then as i'm pushed out on leave within a couple of days, i'm hearing, there's meetings about me across your organization saying they're going to like talk about me the next all him, which was clear to me that i was gonna be fired. they already knew they were gonna fire me, otherwise they're not talking about me while i'm at all hands. so you know, they're already showing everyone. okay. we're pretending ashley's out on this. we use that we're cleaning is not to to so we're clearly gonna fire her work there and for it. so at that point, a lot of people pull away. i start losing a lot of friends. they're scared. i don't blame them because of apple sit culture. it's a real fear of retaliation, and i've had to deal with that said last, most of my friends, they were co workers, the ones are still there. so i'm gonna leave the country. right? yes. so this is what i want to. i kind of says, in addition to the relation of the, of our mental issues, the, and the age and the culture of secrecy,

i felt chargers about that email that tim cooks that which i think definitely reference me. i think at least one other person and was definitely a threat to his entire staff. he said, but anything internally confidential and they will fire anyone who shares anything internal. and he was referencing a meeting where he talked about pay equity and benefits. so let me not, you know, they tell me, i'll tell him what they see. so he's many very clear, like we are standing behind are said culture. so i about church, you know, are we agree with me that email is a violation of federal law. most of apples and the 8 unemployment policy, you've also violate federal law. i sent them like 20 different documents, including the employment agreement i signed when i joined. and so they're working on it sounds like a complaint. now let's, if apple doesn't settle, it wouldn't go to court. an apple i expect is going to be use on dozens of charges against these policies because they're basically a legal and so i'm hoping it starts to help a see change at apple where employees can try to speed up a little bit. i think it was a very long time. no,

because everyone's still used to secrecy and then somebody shouldn't feel. ashley. thank you very much. hold on to we are going to continue our conversation with apple with of lower ashley gilbert about her experience with a wide variety of whistle blowing at the tech giant. we're going to take a short break and then come back to talk about life after whistle blowing state to . 2 2 look forward to talking to you all that technology should work for people. a robot must obey the orders given by human beings accept. we're such orders at conflict with the 1st law show alignment of the patient. we should be very careful about our personal intelligence at the point, obviously is to place a trust rather than to the various jobs with artificial intelligence. we have somebody in the team in the

robot must protect this phone existence with alexis and rick sanchez. and i'm here to plan with you whatever you do. do not watch my new show. seriously. why watch something that's so different. i listed of opinions that he won't get anywhere else. welcome to please, or do you have the state department, the c, i a weapons, bankers, multi 1000000000 dollar corporations. choose your facts for you. go ahead. change and whatever you do. don't marshall stay main street because i'm probably going to make you uncomfortable. my show is called direction, but again, it's not. we don't want to watch it because it might just change the way you the welcome back to the whistle blowers. i'm

john carrie onto. we're speaking with ashley gilbert, a whistleblower from apple, who called attention to environmental dangers at the world's biggest company as well as privacy concerns and other issues. and as you might expect, she paid for her whistle blowing with her career. actually good to have you with us . thanks again for joining us. you john. actually tell us about some of the legal issues involved in your whistle blowing. it seems to me that here you were making protected whistleblower disclosures. at the very least, the company should have been investigating your complaints, but as often happens they attack the messenger. apple is represented by one of the most powerful law firms in the world. oh melvin and meyers. did you have any representation? was there anybody out there to protect your interests or were you on your own as i was on my own in every way possible?

obviously, i think the other issue would be huge. that corporations that have way too much control. and so for lawyers, they were all intimidated by how complicated the case was. and then apple's notoriously very difficult and poor. so they didn't want to go to work. they want to get an end, the federal and i did not want to do that. i wanted to make sure that what they did was known and that they have to fix the issues. so i ended up, i was halfway through law school, so i'm just taking it on representing myself. which allows me to be a bit more at dial 2 because there are a number of issues from environmental to retaliation, those off with the lowercase. so i can just research learn, instead of having to have like 7 burns, which is what actually apple has now the from you mention was the one of the 1st ones they were saying who sent me harassing emails about privacy concerns. but they send tired or, and m w e and morgan lewis and probably more firms. i don't even know about best partners. i switched to a huge team, but i was fortunate enough that i pulled my elated

a number of laws agreed justly with a ton of documentation and evidence. and i was able to get that understand why things can be done on a, mary, i'm going to win every case and i'm currently 5. 015. they look, they lost 5. incredible, incredible. as only you know, i know, i'm sorry, please go right ahead. oh i was going to say it's really david and goliath and it shows, i mean, why? so here, because these companies the lower be charge for that same cook email. you mentioned they last in january of this year and or be set up highlights been or why they hired in army and morgan lewis between these, including a previous and all of the board member. so an executive for the agency and somehow trying to do this like appeal outside of a normal appeal process. so i had to not only respond to those of some arguments used to lose, but also say you're violating the constitution and industry to procedure that we stop and i want, but it's like why i'm not even a licensed attorney. and i have to say, previous agent, so i, you know,

i think there's just shows why these companies get away with this stuff. there's not a lot of people who are equipped to try to do this and those layers want and then, and joe's most of them are captured by companies like apple, whether it's funding advertising or they need an up and an app store or many pod cast be able to go to there's always influences that just make people not want to challenge our who. right. and as i mentioned a few minutes ago, whenever the government investigated your allegations, they found that you were telling the truth. several of the things that you revealed are still being investigated, but in the end, apple threw you out. was there anything at all that you could do about that? i know that you have a lawsuit pending. you have multiple las, it's pending. but as best as you're able, can you tell us a little bit about the personal impact on you and how you've begun recovering or so i want to say like, not only was i right, i was more right than i knew. so as i've been doing for your past and trying to

figure out what actually happened, i wasn't spend it just a couple days after the epa informed awful, they would be inspecting my office due to my disclosures about apple's circle. now, why? and that was the state of justification with it actually told us what you're doing . we need to come see they got a bunch of issues. i've got in trouble. and then i was fired, an apple kid, that inspection and all the issues from the tried to. but i found out there's a number of those type of stories where it was already really bad and it was far worse even than i knew. and so as i'm digging, i'm pressing these agencies and really trying to make sure the issues are addressed . i have retaliation cases of the us department of labor and, and i'll be in california department of labor, but it's taking a very long time. and i kinda see these bottles as a primary, secondary and tertiary where the primary was. all the environmental stuff. secondary was seeing all the retaliation and reporting the retaliation and trying to organize with people to get that address and try to get them to stop at least

a little bit. and then the tertiary is just realizing how you protections, whistle blowers actually out of this country i, i would not actually use the word protection for any of our law, right? you have a chance maybe of a remedy. you're after the fact if you go through an adjudication process, that will be traumatizing on it. so in which i'm doing. but i'm trying to bring to life just how i, you know, it's working. it's designed to by the industry, but for whistle blowers at destroying the us. we're already traumatized. we're already ostracized. going years without a government saying the person should not have been by just that statement. you know, you have trouble finding were people that your credibility, you like even if you decide you wanna do with the lower theater. so that open question of like was this person right. i was lucky enough that i got for your documents way earlier home saying like i was right. so that's where that's extraordinary. where so i been writing about the current state of whistle blowing,

both with legal and post nasty, but also just the emotional term. well, i went through what so many of us do, were you just feel like you lost you put your place in the world? no, to call yourself you don't know how to fit in smotts of depression. i use of all my savings. i still can't find a job, i am pro se on all my cases. so i'm doing that while i'm trying to find work and then advocating along the way. it's when just kind of thrown and i'm one of those whistle blowers where i never even thought i was, was the blowing at 1st. and it seemed like just something you need to do, right, like rated like that. and then, you know, then you're carried on a stop for your life is never the same. so i'm on that path. and as i'm seeing things where i'm hoping things could be improved in some way, even if it's education, i'm trying to do that. so publishing articles, thinking about the experience and really trying to help people understand that with the lower who may come forward, there's a very high percentage their life will just be destroyed, whether they're right or wrong. yeah. and that those any just pretty darn close to

100 percent or not. yeah. actually gilbert, thank you so much for joining us and thank you for your courageous whistle blowing . thank you john. thank you. thank you. i actually do have it blew the whistle at the largest company in the world. apple. it can't possibly have been easy. you heard it yourself. it could not have been a decision to be taken lightly, but it's always worth it in a perfect world. we wouldn't need whistleblowers, we wouldn't need them because companies, governments, and individuals would do the right thing. they wouldn't lie, cheat, steal, and try to cut corners. they would have the best interest of the public in mind, but that is not real life. we have whistle blowers because we need the we have whistle blowers because at least somebody goes into government for the banking or into the corporate world with a clear cut sense of right and wrong. yes, the price of voice of blowing can be very high. but where would we be without be

ashley gilbert except the world. i'm grateful for people like her thanks for joining us for another episode of the west of lowers. i'm john to reaku. we'll see you next time. 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 the, [000:00:00;00]

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