Gay auto workers win health coverage for domestic
partners
By Martha Grevatt
Twinsburg,
Ohio
Ask the average lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender auto
worker if he or she is "out" at work and nine times out of
ten the answer will be no. Ask if they have ever been
harassed or discriminated against on the job and the answer
will be yes.
Their stories of abuse could fill volumes. This writer can
attest to many personal experiences of verbal harassment,
vandalism, sexual harassment and even death threats.
So few would have imagined that this year General Motors,
Ford and DaimlerChrysler would agree to grant
health-insurance benefits to the same-sex domestic partners
of their employees.
In the 1996 contract negotiations with the United Auto
Workers, Chrysler (now DaimlerChrysler) absolutely refused
even the most basic demand to add the words "sexual
orientation" to the Equal Application clause in the national
agreement.
It took a three-year struggle to get those words added to
the 1999 contracts with the Big Three auto makers. It took an
international campaign of faxes, letters, calls, picketing
dealerships and hounding the media. The issue finally broke
into the press, including even the Wall Street Journal.
This fight was led by the Campaign for Equal Rights at
Chrysler and Pride At Work, the official lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender constituency group of the AFL-CIO.
One leader in this campaign, Ron Woods, was a subject of an
award-winning documentary, "Out At Work."
The demand for both protective language and equal benefits
was brought to the 1999 bargaining convention by at least one
local, Local 122 in Twinsburg, Ohio. The 1999 contract
contained an agreement to set up a committee to study the
feasibility of granting same-sex domestic-partner benefits,
although only in the area of health care.
The agreement to provide these benefits, announced on June
8 at a joint news conference by GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler,
was the outcome of this union-negotiated committee. It did
not come from any genuine "commitment to diversity," as the
bosses hypocritically proclaimed.
This victory follows similar ones at United Airlines and
US Airways, and of course the victory in the state of
Vermont.
When these rights are guaranteed in union contracts, they
are safeguarded against being undone at the whim of the
bosses. This was underscored recently when Exxon Corp. tried
to eliminate domestic-partner benefits for all its employees.
The few workers who didn't lose them were those whose unions
had fought for and won them.
While the concession by the Big Three is a tremendous
advance, it still falls short of full equality. It fails in
the areas of bereavement leave, pension, family leave and
other benefits granted to heterosexual spouses. Even the
health benefits are being denied to retirees in same-sex
relationships. This is the first time that retirees have not
received the same improvement in the health-care package as
active employees.
Some lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups,
including Pride At Work, believe that partners of unmarried
heterosexuals should also receive domestic-partner benefits.
Of course, the inequality hits lesbian, gay, bi and trans
workers the hardest, since they are denied the option of
marriage.
The issue of work-place discrimination will not be fully
addressed until protection is extended to transgendered
workers.
The hostile work environment many lesbian, gay, bi and
trans workers face won't go away overnight as a result of
this new development. However, the fortress of bigotry that
is the U.S. auto industry has been shaken to its
foundations.
Martha Grevatt is the national
secretary of Pride At Work-AFL-CIO as well as a
member of the Civil Rights Committee of UAW
Local 122. She has worked at DaimlerChrysler for 13
years.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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