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Exxon Mobil Ends Domestic Partner Benefits and Non-Discrimination Policy
Exxon Mobil Ends Domestic Partner
Benefits and Non-Discrimination Policy
IRVING, Texas - The newly merged Exxon Mobil Corp. will discontinue Mobil’s policy of providing domestic partner benefits and including sexual orientation as a part of its non-discrimination policy.
The move was revealed Dec. 6 by the Human Rights Campaign, which received word of the decision from sources inside the merged company. ExxonMobil confirmed that people currently enrolled in Mobil’s domestic partner benefits program can continue to receive the benefits but no one else may join the plan - even employees who were previously eligible at Mobil.
However, ExxonMobil denied that it has no policy prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. ExxonMobil spokesman Tom Cirigliano said that in a document sent to shareholders, the company interpreted its current “Harassment in the Workplace” policy to include prohibiting job discrimination based on sexual orientation. However, Cirigliano acknowledged neither that policy nor the company’s “Equal Employment Opportunity” policy actually mentions sexual orientation.
The policy interpretation was contained in a proxy statement sent to shareholders in May. It asked them to reject a resolution to add sexual orientation to Exxon’s non-discrimination policy.
“We have a number of problems with communicating corporate anti-discrimination policies through a one-time correspondence with shareholders,” said Wayne Besen, HRC’s associate director of communications. “The statement is not consistently distributed to employees. Furthermore, since it actually requests that shareholders reject adding sexual orientation to the policy, it is a mixed message at best. Whereas, the former Mobil Corp.’s policy emphatically prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation.”
ExxonMobil’s decision bucks a trend among companies to provide explicit protections from discrimination based on sexual orientation and to offer domestic partner benefits. More than half of the Fortune 500 companies include sexual orientation in their non-discrimination policies and nearly 3,000 public and private employers provide health coverage for domestic partners. In the oil and gas industry Chevron, BP Amoco, Shell, Atlantic Richfield and Texaco have policies that include sexual orientation. Chevron, BP Amoco and Shell also offer domestic partner benefits.
ExxonMobil’s decision to end Mobil’s more progressive policies appears to apply only to non-union employees. Contracts between the company and the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union include sexual orientation in their non-discrimination clauses and provide for domestic partner benefits. The contracts will remain in effect until January 2002, but negotiations on the new benefits package will begin next month. Officials at PACE expect that the domestic partner benefits issue will be on the table, but pledged to fight any effort by the company to roll back the benefits. In the interim, PACE officials said that they believe ExxonMobil will have to offer the benefits to new employees that will be covered under the PACE collective bargaining agreement. ExxonMobil employees covered by union contracts number approximately 5,000 nationally.
The disparity in treatment of ExxonMobil’s union and non-union employees was publicized by Pride At Work, an organization of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender union members affiliated with the AFL-CIO. The group works to educate the LGBT community on the benefits of union membership. “This is just one more reason why LGBT workers should organize unions and get their domestic partner benefits and non-discrimination policies included in their collective bargaining agreements,” said T Santora, national co-chair of Pride At Work.
On Dec. 8, HRC Executive Director Elizabeth Birch wrote ExxonMobil Chief Executive Officer Lee R. Raymond to request a dialogue. “The message you are sending to lesbian and gay former employees of Mobil is that it is now OK to discriminate against them in the new company,” Birch wrote. As of Dec. 22, Raymond had not responded.
Meanwhile, the company has been removed from two indexes of gay-friendly companies. GLVReports & Communications announced on Dec. 9 the removal of ExxonMobil from its annual ranking of the top 100 gay-friendly companies. And gfn.com, the Gay Financial Network, took a similar step in removing the company from its list of the top 50 companies for GLBT workers and investors.