Employees' love, sex, and romances in the workplace
Where does the human right to be in love with an officemate end, and where does the employers' prerogatives to discipline and dismiss begin? What is considered acts of immorality and sexual harassment? Or disgraceful acts and immoral conduct? Are these legal grounds for termination of employment?
The Supreme Court has ruled that, as a general rule, employers have no right to interfere in the love affairs of their employees. Management has no jurisdiction over affairs of the heart. But the moment, the work is adversely affected, the dignity of the workplace is desecrated, and office scandals make executives lose their moral standing, then dismissal may be allowed by law. This is a very sensitive subject, especially at this season of Lent. The role of management in dealing with cases of this nature is treading in very delicate matters that involve human dignity, honor, reputation, and the basic right to privacy.
Justice Arturo Brion decided the Imasen case where two lovers who work in the same graveyard shift were caught having sexual intercourse inside the workplace. They were dismissed by the management. They contested their dismissal. The Supreme Court held that the termination of their employment was valid. This was a repeat of the Stanford Microsystems case involving two guards, both married but not to each other. They had sex inside the office of their manager. Justice Andres Narvasa's colorful and vivid narration has become a literary piece that makes Law professors smile and Law students giggle.
There were two teachers in Hagonoy Institute who openly displayed their romantic relationship that scandalized the other teachers and the students too. Madam Justice Flerida Romero did not mince words in condemning them who put the teaching profession in bad light. But there was a principal in Bohol who had an affair with a high school student, that caused his resignation and the dismissal of his wife for trying to cover up her husband's indiscretions. But a 30-year-old teacher in a Bacolod Chinese school who married her 16-year old student was not deemed to be immoral because they did not do anything wrong. Justice Florenz Regalado said that the heart has its own reasons that reason itself does not know.
Also, pregnancy without prior marriage is not necessarily immoral, much less to be deemed disgraceful conduct. Employers cannot use the religious standards of morality as a yardstick with which to measure employee behavior, much less as a legal basis for termination of employment.
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