The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration recently announced that whistleblowers covered by any one of 22 statutes administered by OSHA can now file complaints with the agency online.

“The ability of workers to speak out and exercise their rights without fear of retaliation provides the backbone for some of American workers’ most essential protections,” said OSHA Director Dr. David Michaels in an agency press release. “Whistleblower laws protect not only workers, but also the public at large and now workers will have an additional avenue available to file a complaint with OSHA.”

Currently, employees can make complaints to OSHA by filing a written complaint or by calling the agency’s 800 number or by calling an OSHA regional or area office. With this change, employees can now electronically submit a whistleblower complaint to OSHA by visiting www.osha.gov/whistleblower/WBComplaint.html.

The new online form prompts the worker to include basic whistleblower complaint information so they can be easily contacted for follow-up. Complaints are automatically routed to the appropriate regional whistleblower investigators. In addition, the complaint form can also be downloaded and submitted to the agency in hard-copy format by fax, mail or hand-delivery. The paper version is identical to the electronic version and requests the same information necessary to initiate a whistleblower investigation.

The whistleblower provisions of 22 statutes protect employees who report violations of various securities laws, trucking, airline, nuclear power, pipeline, environmental, rail, public transportation, workplace safety and health, and consumer protection laws.