We’ve been here before. I can remember railing against the “right priority” traffic law, whose nonobservance typically injures only the innocent parties in an accident: the driver whose priority has been overlooked or the passenger of a guilty driver. So it is too with tough new workplace legislation on sexual, racial, moral and psychological harassment currently in the pipeline. Belgian legislators have once again succeeded in disadvantaging the innocent. Why, one might ask? Doesn’t the new law envisage heavy fines for perpetrators and commensurate damages for victims? Yes, indeed, and therein lies the problem.

Good law is based on a realistic assessment of the crime being targeted. Sentencing, at least under EU guidelines, should observe a sense of proportion. The new harassment measures go way beyond proportionality into the realms of political correctness and a slavish courting of the female vote. Sanctions against someone who harasses a colleague can run as high as six months of gross salary for a crime that typically involves only the spoken word, a few emails or some outrageous gestures. If the perpetrator is the victim’s boss, then we’re looking at 12,000 euros or so, the price of a small car. You would currently get off far lighter if you mugged a pensioner or robbed a convenience store at gunpoint. And if the victim is a higher staff employee, then the perpetrator or perpetrators are likely to be upper management themselves and may end up paying out 20 to 30,000 euros each.

Witnesses to harassment cases are notoriously hard to call. They may be considered guilty through implication or omission. Thus any law that relies as much on subjective interpretation of events as this one does, while levying substantial financial penalties, makes perjury a highly attractive proposition. It would not be entirely unthinkable for a plaintiff and a doctor to collude in presenting damning testimony of psychological damage, if they could be sure of sharing a large enough sum at the end of the trial.

Beyond this, the new provisions punish women. By making their vulnerability and their sexuality the cornerstone of such a draconian law, women will tend to feel guilty about the slightest coquetry, the mildest flirt and any clothing that is other than frankly dowdy. Their workspace and its immediate vicinity will be instinctively perceived and evaluated by all male colleagues in terms of risk. It will become wise to avoid them, certainly wise never to engage in playful banter or compliment and never, ever to joke. Indeed, and here’s the rub, it may be wisest not to employ women at all, if this is a possible option.

Since the forfeits envisaged under the new legislation can be extended to include workplace atmosphere, for which an employer is held ultimately responsible, then any boss will think twice before hiring an attractive woman (for fear of a harassment suit based on a climate of innuendo) or even an unattractive one who might claim she is being ostracized or alienated by inattention ... because even that is a possible complaint. Under the new law women will more likely be treated with suspicion, left out of the loop in important communications and, moreover, regarded as inveterate gold-diggers if they ever consider complaining.

A further reason to mistrust this law, is that it comes at the wrong time. Accusations of workplace harassment are currently on the wane in Belgium, which means that the policies of consciousness-raising and information are working. So why poison the changing atmosphere with a law which seems to say: you can’t be trusted to behave so we’ll slap you about a bit? It looks like grandstanding and political expediency of the most obvious kind. The people who will really have a field day when these provisions are introduced are the big company lawyers as they draft newer and tighter indemnity and confidentiality clauses into employment contracts.

Moreover, if I can prove that my female colleague was wearing a perfume called “Seduction” to work, which contains an ingredient taken from the perineal sweat gland of the female musk ox and thus fully intended to induce sexual arousal ... Well, my dear, just who is harassing who? This could all get VERY silly before we see sanity restored.


© Edwin Drood, February 2013



Illustration:
man and woman working with an IBM computer at NASA, 1957. Photographer unknown.