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December 26, 2003
‘Tis the Season to Bar Sexual Orientation Discrimination
by William Baue
The New York City Employees Retirement System files a shareowner resolution asking 11 Fortune 500
companies to explicitly bar sexual orientation discrimination.
SocialFunds.com --
During the holiday season, business people brace themselves for the inevitable dreaded gift: a tie
or scarf they could never wear because it clashes so blatantly with their own taste. While some
recipients send a polite thank-you note and then bury the gift in the closet as if they never
received it, the wise ones take another tack: they pass the gift along to someone who truly
appreciates it.
This holiday season, the New York City Employees
Retirement System (NYCERS) is gifting 11 Fortune 500
companies with a shareowner resolution asking them to explicitly bar sexual orientation
discrimination in their equal employment opportunity (EEO) code. While many companies dread
receiving shareowner resolutions, others are more prudent, recognizing that they cannot simply
ignore or closet their shareowners’ wishes.
One of the companies, CSX (ticker: CSX), sensibly
passed the gift along to their gay, lesbian, and bisexual employees by explicitly banning sexual
orientation discrimination in its corporate code of
ethics. CSX spokesperson Dan Murphy said the company made the change earlier this month
“because it’s the right thing to do.”
NYCERS filed the resolution at ten
other Fortune 500 companies, including Goodyear (GT), Southern (SO), Waste Management (WMI), and, for the
fourth year in a row, ExxonMobil (XOM).
“We expect the
companies in which we invest City pension funds to hire and promote employees based on their
qualifications and performance—it’s good policy and good business,” said Martha
Stark, New York City finance commissioner and chair of the NYCERS board of trustees. “We
call on these companies to prohibit discrimination and once and for all resolve doubts about their
commitment to equal employment opportunity.”
Before the merger between Exxon and
Mobil, Mobil had put in place a formal policy prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination. After
the merger, ExxonMobil promptly repealed this policy and has been receiving a sexual orientation
nondiscrimination shareowner resolution since.
Last year, the resolution received 27.3 percent of the vote at the company’s annual meeting.
“ExxonMobil maintains that its current policy, which does not reference sexual
orientation, is adequate,” said Shelley Alpern, director of social research and advocacy at
Trillium Asset Management, which
co-filed the resolution. “But no court has ever upheld such an interpretation.”
The resolution does not document any instances of overt discrimination at these companies, but
rather points out that many regions where they operate require companies to specifically bar sexual
orientation discrimination. For example, fourteen states, including New York, and more than 150
cities and counties, including Dallas and the District of Columbia, have laws prohibiting
employment discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Four cities (Atlanta, Los
Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle) have gone a step further by adopting legislation restricting
business with companies that do not guarantee equal treatment for lesbian and gay employees.
The business case for barring sexual orientation discrimination extends to mainstream consumer
perception, as national public opinion polls consistently find more than three-quarters of
Americans favor equal workplace rights for gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals. The resolution cites a
June 2001 Gallup poll in which 85 percent of respondents supported equal opportunity in employment
for gays and lesbians.
NYCERS is a veteran of filing sexual orientation non-discrimination
resolutions. NYCERS contended with Cracker Barrel for more than a decade before the parent
company, CBRL Group (CBRL), formally barred sexual
orientation discrimination last year after the resolution garnered 58 percent of the vote.
“It is important that we send a message to companies that once we file shareholder
proposals, we’re not going to go away until they do the right thing,” said William
Thompson, the comptroller for New York City who filed the resolutions on behalf of NYCERS.
“We will not give up until all of these companies amend their policies to provide equal
treatment for all.”
©
SRI World Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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