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Labor Day
2006:
Gays Mark
Year Of Successes
by
365Gay.com from the Web, September 4, 2006
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New York City Gays in trade unions
will march under their own banners in Labor Day parades across the country
today, a sign of the growing visibility of LGBT workers.
More and more unions are requiring equality for gay and transsexual workers in
contracts. But, legislation on both the state and national level is sorely
lacking.
In 34 states, it is legal to fire someone based on their sexual orientation.
In 44 states, it is legal to do so based on gender identity. While
lawmakers have been slow, or in many cases reluctant, to extend employment
rights to members of the LGBT community, labor and business have not.
As of this year 92 percent of the Fortune 500 companies include sexual
orientation protection and a May Gallup Poll found that approximately 89% of
prospective voters believe that gays and lesbians should have workplace
nondiscrimination protection.
Three years ago only 65% of the Fortune 500 companies explicitly offered
workplace protection to their gay and lesbian employees.
In addition to an almost clean sweep by the nation's biggest companies this
year, for the first time, a majority of them also offer domestic partner health
insurance benefits.
Almost all major unions have LGBT caucuses or components and the inclusion of
basis LGBT employee rights and partner benefits has become a mainstay in union
contract negotiations with varying results.
Labor contracts negotiated between unions and the state of Michigan provided for
health benefits for the same-sex partners of state workers.
But, despite the agreement with the unions, in December, 2004, Governor Jennifer
Granholm announced that domestic partner benefits would be removed from the
contracts following a legal opinion from Attorney General Mike Cox that the
state's constitutional amendment banning gay marriage bared all public employers
from providing domestic partner benefits. (story).
Gay state employees sued and the case is still pending.
Conservatives in a half dozen other states with constitutional amendments also
are fighting state universities which offer partner benefits.
And, while major corporations are signing on to LGBT rights tens of thousands of
gays work for smaller non-unionized companies which have no protections.
Still, Labor Day 2006 marks a year of the greatest achievements for LGBT workers
in nearly a decade.
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