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Brian Dickerson: Automakers Conspicuously AWOL At Turning Point For Gay Rights



May 4, 2014

It has been a rough couple of weeks for old-school bigotry.

Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling entered the NBA playoffs as the toast of the local NAACP and ended the month as a pariah exiled from his own team’s arena.

Conservative broadcasters first made anti-government rancher Cliven Bundy a folk hero, then were forced to disown him after he uncorked an extemporaneous defense of slavery.

And here in Michigan, a roster of the state’s largest and most respected employers is challenging the state’s Republican-led Legislature to expand legal protections for workers facing workplace discrimination over their sexual orientation.

 

The initiative by AT&T, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Consumers Energy, Dow Chemical and a half dozen other blue-chip corporations received considerably less attention than the blowback from the Sterling and Bundy affairs. But it was a watershed moment for gay and lesbian workers here.

■ Related: Major Michigan companies want to ban LGBT discrimination against workers

For three years, Gov. Rick Snyder and his legislative colleagues have countenanced (and, in one instance, codified) discrimination against gay employees and their families, even as the state’s Civil Right Commission warned that Michigan’s homophobic image was undermining the state’s efforts to attract skilled workers.

■ Related: The price Michigan pays for its intolerance toward gay people (guest column)

Now, for the first time, the state’s biggest employers are sounding the same alarm.

The Michigan Competitive Workforce Coalition describes itself on its website as a partnership of business leaders “who have come together around the goal of updating Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA) to include sexual orientation and gender identity.” The 38-year-old Elliott-Larsen Act bars discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender, national origin or marital status, but not sexual orientation, providing workers denied housing, jobs or promotions because they are gay no civil remedy under Michigan law.

Co-chaired by AT&T Michigan President Jim Murray, Herman Miller CEO Brian Walker and Kary Moss, executive director of the Michigan American Civil Liberties Union, the coalition’s charter members include Google, PADNOS, Southwest Michigan First, Steelcase, Strategic Staffing Solutions and Whirlpool, as well as the companies listed above.

Most of the state’s largest employers, including General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler, already have internal policies barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Organizers say all three automakers were invited to join the initiative to amend the Elliott-Larsen Act.

So where were the pillars of Michigan’s corporate community when AT&T, Herman Miller and others decided to go to bat for gay rights? Why has none of the Detroit Three signed onto a coalition whose legislative mission seems perfectly consistent with the automakers’ corporate principles?

I put that question to all three companies Friday, a day after the Michigan Coalition Workforce Coalition went public with its anti-discrimination campaign.

“Ford absolutely supports the group’s goals, which reflect our long-standing and inclusive HR practices,” Ford spokeswoman Susan Krusel said in an e-mail response to my telephone inquiries. “Every member of our Ford team is valued, and we have been offering same-sex partner benefits since 2000.”

Kevin Frazier, a spokesman for Chrysler Group LLC, noted in a prepared statement that his employer “was among the first automakers in the U.S. to offer domestic-partner benefits to its employees, and has achieved a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index eight times since the benchmark was established.”

And Heather Rosenker, a Washington-based spokeswoman for GM’s governmental relations unit, drew my attention to the company’s anti-discrimination policy and long record of providing same-sex partner benefits. Rosenker said GM is continuing to study the Michigan Competitive Workforce Coalition’s proposal.

OK, car people, I get it: You got out of the business of discriminating against gay people before it was cool. You want to be on the right side of history, but you prefer to do so in a discreet way that doesn’t rile the unevolved pickup purchasers in Peoria.

But if your companies oppose discrimination against gays and lesbians, why wait for a newspaper to ask before you say so? And if some of your largest and most respected corporate neighbors are ready to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you, what’s the argument for hanging back when the state’s attention has turned to this issue?

By whatever standard corporate soothsayers choose to measure its failing pulse — the relentless erosion of public support, a cascade of hostile court rulings, or self-imposed changes in workplace policy — government-sanctioned discrimination against gay people is in its death throes.

Detroit automakers have little to gain, and much to lose, by being among the last to acknowledge its passing.