Taking HRC's State of the Workplace Report to the Next Level

by Michael Jones · 2009-02-17 10:35:00 UTC
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Fortune 500 companiesThe Human Rights Campaign Foundation (the educational wing of the Human Rights Campaign) is out with their annual "State of the Workplace" report, which documents just how LGBT-friendly U.S. companies (particularly Fortune 500 companies) are.  This year's findings?  Sixty of the top 100 U.S. companies now have gender identity protections for their employees, a sharp rise over nine years ago, when only three of the top 500 companies had such protections.  Moreover, 85 percent of the top 500 companies now have workplace anti-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation, and 57 percent of the top 500 provide domestic partnership benefits.

The report's information is certainly good news, as it demonstrates major headway that's been made among big business in terms of fostering inclusive workplaces and broadening the scope of benefits over the past ten years.  But what about accounting for whether or not a company supports the right of same-sex couples to marry?  Isn't that a question worth asking of companies before rating them on an LGBT rights index?

The HRC report does cite the fact that Levi Strauss & Company, Google, and Apple all signed an amicus brief submitted to the California State Supreme Court calling on the court to invalidate Proposition 8 and recognize equal marriage rights for all.  But to the best of our knowledge, those companies aren't rewarded in HRC's index for taking the extra, bold step of supporting full marriage rights for same-sex couples.  Shouldn't they be?

Maybe it's time for HRC to reconfigure what it means for a company to receive a perfect score on their LGBT-friendly index.  It might also be a means of organizing big business to get behind same-sex marriage rights - something that will be critical to making marriage equality a reality in more than just Massachusetts and Connecticut.

*UPDATE:  We should definitely clarify that HRC has two separate things here.  One is the State of the Workplace report, and one is the Corporate Equality Index (CEI).  The CEI is the instrument that rates companies on a scale of 1-100.  HRC's State of the Workplace report, mentioned in this post, accounts for a company's CEI score, but is not in itself a scoring mechanism.  HRC's next CEI will be published in Fall 2009.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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