NC’s Anti-Retaliation Law For Workers Is Not Working.

WUNC | By Stacia Brown,

Published August 14, 2020 at 12:18 PM EDT

A yellow warning triangle sign showing a person slipping on the ground. — A North Carolina law aimed to protect workers who get injured on the job may not be doing so, according to a new investigative story.

North Carolina’s 1992 Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act (REDA) is intended to protect workers from retaliation when they file complaints related to on-the-job injury and other health and safety concerns. It should keep employers from firing workers who complain.

But in a new investigative piece in The News and Observer, reporter Greg Gordon tells the story of one worker who claims that REDA’s provisions have failed him. Robert Maughmer was fired from AT&T just three weeks after returning to the job, following a hand injury sustained on the job. He recorded his termination phone call and filed a claim stating his belief that he was fired to prevent a workers’ compensation filing. Host Frank Stasio talks to Greg Gordon about Maughmer’s case and the history of REDA.

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Stacia Brown

Stacia L. Brown is a writer and audio storyteller who has worked in public media since 2016, when she partnered with the Association of Independents in Radio and Baltimore's WEAA 88.9 to create The Rise of Charm City, a narrative podcast that centered community oral histories. She has worked for WAMU’s daily news radio program, 1A, as well as WUNC’s The State of Things. Stacia was a producer for WUNC's award-winning series, Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon and a co-creator of the station's first children's literacy podcast, The Story Stables. She served as a senior producer for two Ten Percent Happier podcasts, Childproof and More Than a Feeling. In early 2023, she was interim executive producer for WNYC’s The Takeaway.

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Frank Stasio

Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.

See stories by Frank Stasio