EFCA: Eviscerated, FUBAR Companies Act

It strikes me as odd that the same society that spends so much energy tearing down the artificial limits that hold back citizens in social structures would be so quick to erect such limits in the workplace.

For instance, we celebrate women who shatter the “Holly Homemaker” mold. We celebrate Obama for redefining what’s possible for blacks in America. We celebrate politicians who are willing to converse with our enemies and risk redefining international relationships in order to solve seemingly intractable problems.

In this society, where is there a place for EFCA, an act that constricts employees’ abilities to move ahead, to negotiate on their own terms, to break the mold? Last time I looked, I didn’t see us advocating for arranged marriages (or even the right for specific families to unilaterally adopt arranged marriage practices based on a “card check”… amongst the kids)! I don’t see the president naming a race relations czar, either, empowered to dictate–city-by-city–cross-race codes of conduct. I don’t see this happening because such ideas are ridiculous in a free society.

So why are we implementing the equivalent in business? Just because management needs to be fixed does not mean that the solution is to empower its adversary. Remember last year’s election? We voted against this type of tit-for-tat thinking.

Two big areas in which our society still adhere to industrial-era institutional constructs–labor unions and elementary schools–are both failing us.

That should be a clue as to what to do with the EFCA.

Hint: send it the way of arranged marriages.

Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.