There is nothing lovable about the “Love Contract”

Divorce does happen that does not mean that we should do away with marriages. Knife does help a criminal in doing unlawful punishable activity but that does not mean we should do away with knives. We have witnessed incidents when an organization has paid heavily for the cases of sexual harassment against its top management or supervisor. The resignation of Infosys Technologies worldwide head (sales) and board director Phaneesh Murthy following an allegation of sexual harassment by a former employee against him in the US is a great example of this. But does that mean that organization should formulate that kind of policies which would completely discourage people from having a romantic relationship in the organization.

The case of Pritam and Jagruti is an example where the organization has infringed upon the employees’ personal lives. By binding them in the love contract what the organization will gain is debatable. The contract says “avoiding any possible misunderstanding, moral, ethical, and social problems such as favoritism, nepotism, corruption, sexual harassment etc” why this kind of contract only for the employees in romantic relationship. Every employee in the organization should be governed by “Code of Business Conduct and Ethics”. And all these clauses of Love contract should be part of it. You don’t have to be necessarily in a romantic relationship to promote favoritism or corruption. And neither the fall out of every relationship leads to sexual harassment or physical violence.

Carving out Love Contract as an independent contract will have some immediate consequences. Employee will think twice before getting into a romantic relationship in the same organization. They might fear that they have to also sign the love contract if the management knows about the relationship. This love contact might be used as an excuse by the management when they will look to fire people. Sometime employees do not want to confirm about their relationship and they try to be privy about it. Signing in a love contract will be confirming to their relationship which will have consequences beyond the organization premises. It might disturb their social and family life. They might apprehend this kind of contract will be great obstacle in the professional growth of the employee in the same organization. In that case there are also chances that one of the two employees might leave the organization voluntarily. And an organization might loose a competent employee.

The case also tells that incase Pritam dose not sign the contract it is Jagruti who would resign. The reason behind this might be that Pritam might be hard to replace. But if it gets generalized when in most of the cases women are asked to leave the organization then it would definitely invite the allegation of sex discrimination.

Practices of invading employees’ personal life and asking the fair sex to resign are against the principle of equal opportunity, which says employment opportunity should be solely provided on the basis of qualifications and competencies. It should be without regard to employee’s race, color, religion, national origin, citizenship, age, sex, marital status, relationship status ,ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, socio-economic background or sexual orientation.