Home Depot: Pets Yes, Gays No
by Doreen Brandt, 365Gay.com from the Web, September 2, 2004
Washington, DC -- Home Depot, Sprint, Ecolab and Waste Management -- all Fortune 500 companies are under fire for decisions to offer pet insurance as a company benefit but not domestic partner insurance to its gay and lesbian workers.
All four include gays and lesbians in their nondiscrimination policies but have declined to include gender identity.
"Paying for a parrot's but not a person's hospital stay is absurd," said Human Rights Campaign President Cheryl Jacques.
Home Depot is based in Atlanta; Sprint is based in Overland Park, Kan.; Waste Management is based in Houston, Texas; and Ecolab is in St. Paul, Minn.
Two of the three companies will receive failing grades, Jacques said, when HRC releases its annual Corporate Equality Index later this month.
The index measures how equitably companies treat their gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees, consumers and investors.
Home Depot will receive a score of 57 percent; Waste Management, 43 percent; and Sprint, 71 percent.
Ecolab will not be scored because the company has never replied to the HRC questionnaire.
"Smart, forward-looking companies understand that treating their gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees equitably is good for business," said HRC Education Director Kim I. Mills.
"We hope that these four companies will see the irony of their pets-over-people policy and strive for the highest scores on our index by offering domestic partner health insurance."
At least one Home Depot executive appeared to agree. Home Depot's vice president of diversity and inclusion, Gloria Johnson-Goins, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the company's policy "looked funny to me, too" when she arrived at the company 13 months ago.
"It's time for these companies to change ways and commit to their employees' families, not just their family dogs," added Jacques.
In a 2004 survey of 459 companies, the Society for Human Resource Management reported that 34 percent offer same-sex benefits; 27 percent of respondents offered opposite-sex domestic partnership benefits.
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