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.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-09-20 04:27 pm (UTC)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.