2005 HRC Corporate Equality Index

[bjarvis]

Our LGBT employee group co-ordinator at work circulated a PDF file of HRC's latest corporate equality index. My own employer has improved over last year but still earns less than a 100% rating.

Looking through the tables, I was surprised how low some major corporations rank still. I wasn't surprised that Daimler Chrysler, Ford and Toyota ranked 100%, but was shocked that Nissan was dragging at the bottom of the list with a score of only 29.

Almost a dozen large financial firms scored 100%, but Morningstar and Franklin Templeton don't even have nondiscrimination clauses in their policies.

Pharmaceutical giants GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer ranked 100, but Bayer only 29.

Retail firms Best Buy, Borders, Estee Lauder, Replacements, SC Johnson & Son, Sears, Walgreens and Staples all scored 100, but Radio Shack, Rite Aid and Meijer were all bottom-feeders. All that could be said about Meijer (score 14) in the report is that they weren't currently an active sponsor of anti-LGBT activities!

I find it slightly ironic that HRC offers an affinity Visa card via Providian Financial, an organization which scores only 86, admittedly an improvement over last year's 71.

More info at: http://www.hrc.org/Template.cfm?Section=Press_Room&CONTENTID=28963&TEMPLATE=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm

Comments

[otterpop58.livejournal.com]

hmmm. I'm disappointed to see that Adobe is not at 100 (and Macromedia isn't listed). Perhaps I'll drop a note to the President/CEO.

I'm familiar with BuyBlue - perhaps we also need a BuyPink!

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Re: BuyPink. I suggested last fall to the IAGSDC that they consider where money is being spent, avoiding anti-LGBT vendors and patronizing LGBT+ ones. I was rather surprised at the amount of heat the suggestion brought from certain quarters, but I still think it's fundamentally a good idea.

[allanh.livejournal.com]

I can testify from many years of working with High Tech Gays (HTG) to get antidiscrim policies in individual companies and antidiscrim laws at a county level ... creating change in large companies can take years.

Ironically, it often doesn't take a large effort, just persistence. I've seen huge companies in Silicon Valley activate antidiscrim policies after just one person went to HR and enquired. (Usually, it takes several trips to HR and to senior execs to get the message across ... but just one person can make a tremendous difference.)

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Yup, sometimes all that is necessary is for the right person to ask the question at the right time.

Many years ago, when I worked for the University of Toronto, I was involved in the committee pushing UofT to add domestic partner benefits. The canned line I kept getting back from the administration was that it would cost too much to extend benefits. Not really believing this, I spent two days making telephone calls to other post-secondary institutions and to various company benefit providers around the country to asking (a) how many LGBT folks signed up when benefits were offered, and (b) how much extra did it cost?

In a nutshell, relatively few folks actually took advantage of domestic partner benefits and the overall cost was close to $0. Indeed most insurance companies were seeing the light and were arbitrarily writing in domestic partner benefits into their default product offerings. The benefits extension at UofT happened within a year.

OK, that was a long time ago in another country, but...

About five years ago, my hubby's law firm in DC (headquarters in Atlanta, GA) published an updated nondiscrimination policy but excluded sexual orientation. Kent sent a kindly e-mail to the managing partner of Kent's branch, the local HR rep and the corporate senior HR rep noting the omission and asking that it be revised again. Within two weeks, a revised policy was released which did indeed include sexual orientation.

A little while later, Kent suggested that the benefits packages be updated to reflect the new nondiscrimination policy and it was indeed updated when the bennies package was renewed.

[paigemom.livejournal.com]

that's my bro!

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

Just to note that the reality on the ground may be different from such scorings based on written policies. Some companies with enlightened cultures wouldn't dream of supporting discrimination or harrassment, but haven't gotten around to embedding that in their written policies -- "we just don't do that kind of thing!" And conversely, just because HR droids have put out a written policy doesn't mean the management effectively supports it. The financial industry (for example) is notorious for allowing personal bias of managers to determine conditions of employment, with nearly perfect deniability. Morningstar, for example, is supposed to be terrific despite a lack of written policies. Meanwhile, evaluations like this one just encourage hypocrisy.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

And further: some companies aren't included because responding to surveys from outside lobbying groups simply isn't a priority for their HR staff. Perfectly supportive firms may have been excluded by a lack of response, or were simply overlooked.

The item I tend to look for is offering domestic partner benefits. Anyone can write a policy of nondiscrimination but offering DP bennies makes it a budget item, the most tangible statement of a firm's priorities, intents & practices.