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My wife and I met when we both worked for the same newspaper over on the coast. That was more than 50 years ago, before lawyers took over the world. I still remember how astonished our employer was when we told him we needed a couple of days off to get married. I'm sure his bewilderment was partly because he couldn't believe this lovely young woman would have anything to do with a barely housebroken ruffian like me but it was also because neither the boss nor our co-workers knew what was going on behind their backs. We're talking about an era when it wasn't cool to let it all hang out, as the modern saying goes. Our boy-girl stuff took place off the newspaper premises.
Today, on-the-job romances are fraught with all kinds of legal fireworks so I suppose it's inevitable that employers are calling in their attorneys to protect them from shrapnel if and when a workplace affair blows up. According to Molly Selvin of the Los Angeles Times, the foxhole of choice in this new theater of war is known as a “consensual relationship agreement” as the legal profession calls it, or “love contract” as non-lawyers refer to it.
Workplace romances have been around as long as men and women have toiled in close proximity, but these relationships have become mine fields for employers mostly since laws were passed making sexual harassment fertile grounds for lawsuits. When a passionate interlude ends these days, it's tempting for the scorned party to forget his or her true role in the affair and start recalling that it was non-consensual and grounds for a generous financial settlement. In these circumstances, when the “he-said-she-said” business starts, realistic employers start dragging out their checkbooks.
The love contract so far has been waved under the noses of business executives whose roaming hands are known or suspected, Selvin wrote, and is proffered whether or not the love birds involved might be married to others. In other words it's morally neutral. When signed, however, it's considered a strong shield against later charges that somebody was wronged in a way that could unlock the company treasury. Selvin said these love contracts haven't been tested in court yet, but she quotes one corporate bigwig who says they have already short-circuited several threatened suits against his firm.
As you might expect, the innovative love contract is most common in the entertainment industry, home of the famed casting couch, but it's expected to become more routine elsewhere in the business world since a recent survey cited by Selvin shows that 43 percent of U.S. workers admit to having dated a co-worker. Presumably, the other 57 percent are already married and committed to their mates, but I wouldn't bet on that. Would you confess nasty things to some pollster?
Selvin said that one attorney she interviewed said his firm has drafted one thousand love contracts which he claims is only a small part of the several thousand existing today.
Good golly Miss Molly!
By: Bill Mead
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