Employment Benefits

Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, LesBiGays on cinema and television screens may not be in Kansas anymore. But when the picture turns to the corporate workforce, LesBiGays are in Kansas, and in all of the forty-nine sister states, as well.⁷⁴ Across America, many company managers have realized that LesBiGay employees are extremely valuable, and must be treated equitably in order to be recruited and retained.⁷⁵ Extension of domestic partnership benefits thus has become an increasingly standard private business practice. Jere Drummond, cochair of the Diversity Council at BellSouth Corporation in Atlanta, characterized the growing attitude among employers: "We know that to remain competitive, we must attract and retain a work force that reflects the diversity of the communities we serve."⁷⁶ For BellSouth, the last of the Baby Bells to announce its policy of equal treatment, the commitment to a first-rate benefits package for LesBiGay domestic partners includes medical, dental, life and accidental death and dismemberment insurance, and family and medical leave.

Similar entitlements have been granted by whole market sectors, including several of the "old economy" industries. Within the month of June 2000 alone, the Big Three auto manufacturers (Ford, General Motors, and Daimler-Chrysler) trailed Subaru of America in adopting domestic partnership benefits; among food producers, Coca-Cola joined General Mills and Pillsbury.⁷⁷ Four months later, Boeing followed Honeywell's lead as the second aerospace contractor to provide benefits to its nonunion employees.⁷⁸ Within the same year, eight of the ten largest passenger airlines signed on (TWA and Alaska Airlines being the two exceptions).⁷⁹