Love contract, or consensual relationship agreements, according to Wikipedia, is a legal contract meant to limit the liability of an employer whose employees are romantically involved. The love contract signed by the concerned employees is supposed to protect the company from indemnity in case one party brings a sexual harassment lawsuit against the company after their relationship fails, and hence claims that the love relationship is consensual and both parties need to sign it. Also, it may stipulate rules for acceptable romantic behaviour in the workplace.
But is it right to confine the most complex yet simple of all the emotions, the very essence of life, the source and inspiration of most good things on earth within a legal contract? Do people have control over love? When we know them most love marriages round the globe have their roots in office romance why the effort to control it? Well some jobs require bachelors, some prefer married people. It’s understandable. But where or how do you fit in a person romantically involved in a relationship, in a company? Do we have jobs that require the employee not to engage in a romantic relationship during his tenure in the company? So at the first place a contract binding love to workplace doesn’t appeal much to me even though people in favour of it have thousand reasons to defend it.
Secondly, when it comes to accusing or rather claiming that the two employees are in a romantic relationship, what proof does the senior manager or the employer have at his disposal? It might very well turn out that the employees do not buy the accusations and proclaim them to be “just friends”! The company will have no answer to it and they would easily evade the contract.
And then, talking of complaints of favouritism, it is not just confined to people involved in a romantic relationship. Favouritism happens at every level in any (rather most) organization(s) and people at influential positions are found to help their favoured employees more often than not. So what about that kind of favouritism? What about people favouring their own family members, near and far relatives, neighbours and friends? So why this much fuss about love relationships? Employers should first look to plug these other holes first.
Focussing on the objective of protecting the company from sex harassment lawsuits, a question pops up in mind. Does it discourage sexual harassment lawsuits being filed? Well they can still be filed against a person; but what if he is your superior in the organization? The sub-ordinate is bound to give second thoughts to it. Also the contract clearly states that the two concerned employees are in a consensual romantic relationship, thus, giving either party an opportunity to exploit this agreement when things take an ugly turn.
Now donning the hats of a devil’s advocate, it might also happen that one of the concerned employees persuades the other not to sign the love contract, or rather keep their love life a secret and then later resort to file a lawsuit of sexual harassment against the company.
So, when the love contract can’t be that easily enforced on the employees and employees can still find ways to outsmart their employers, should we still trust the love contract to do good for the company in the future? I doubt so. Does it not seem like a double-edged sword for both employers and the employees? Well I don’t need to provide further arguments for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment