Q-Seattle Events: Tacky Tourist Clubs

It has become a sure sign of fall, as G.A.Y. blog points out, when Human Rights Campaign releases the results of its annual survey of corporate policies toward LGBT employees.

The Corporate Equality Index, which this year rates 519 businesses, measures the extent to which employers protect their LGBT employees. 195 companies on this year's survey earned perfect scores on the HRC criteria compared to 138 in last year's version and only 13 on the first survey in 2002. (A larger group of employers has been rated each year.)

The Index rates employers on a scale from 0 to 100 percent on their treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees, consumers and investors. The 195 businesses that met all of the criteria employ more than 8.3 million workers, according to HRC.

Local companies did fairly well in the survey with several companies -- Microsoft, Starbucks, WAMU, Nordstrom, REI -- getting perfect scores. Chicago-based Boeing, and San Jose-based Adobe also get perfect scores.

Seattle-based WAMU is one of a minority banking/financial services companies with a perfect score. That's more significant because only 32% of 100 rated companies in that industry achieved the top rank. Bank of America, KeyBank, US Bank, and Wells Fargo also earn perfect scores.

For the first time, Cincinatti-based Macy's joins Nordstrom as one of eight out of 11 apparel/department stores with perfect scores.

Issaquah-based Costco scored a 93 because it doesn't offer some transgender health benefits that are included in the HRC criteria.

Seattle-based Amazon.com scores an 80 because it still fails to provide protection from bias because of gender identity or expression and don't offer diversity training on that issue.

Safeco Corp. earns a 75 rating because it doesn't offer benefits, bias protections, or diversity training for gender-identity issues. 14 of the 29 rated insurance companies on the survey garnered perfect ratings, putting Safeco in the middle of the pack for that industry, but far better than AIG's 30 rating.

Federal Way's Weyerhaeuser Co. is scored at 75 because it offers a limited array of health benefits to unmarried partners of employees.

Among many law firms on the survey, Seattle's Perkins Coie is scored at 85 because it doesn't offer benefits to transgender employees and doesn't include gender identity issues in its employee handbook.

Among the 57 companies that have newly achieved a perfect score of 100 percent are: Allstate Insurance Co.(ALL), Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS), Esurance Inc., J.C. Penney Co. Inc. (JCP), KeyCorp (KEY), Macy?s Inc. (M), Marriott International Inc. (MAR), Mastercard Inc. (MA), Waste Management Inc. (WMI) and Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO).

Although this year's version isn't yet available, HRC will eventually compile the survey results into a consumer-oriented brochure called "Buying for Equality". One company that remains firmly at the bottom in the current results is Houston-based Exxon Mobil which maintains its 0 rating -- making it one of the most hostile companies on the index. BP America and Chevron, by contrast, retain their perfect 100 ratings on this year's survey.

Cincinnati-based Kroger, which owns dominant local supermarket brands QFC and Fred Meyer, improved its score somewhat -- moving up to 75 from last year's miserable 35 rating. That score ties it with Safeway. The company that owns Albertson's -- SuperValue, Inc. -- gets a perfect score.

Labels: activism, business, equal rights

According to a story in the News Tribune, the reaction at Sonics/Storm headquarters might have been more serious than the team let on this winter during the media storm that erupted when The Stranger's Josh Feit dug up the anti-gay political donations by Sonics/Storm co-owners and silent partners Tom Ward and Aubrey McClendon.

Meanwhile, in the wake of Feb. 26 revelations that two of [Seattle SuperSonics chairman Clay] Bennett's partners, Tom Ward and Aubrey McClendon, bankrolled an anti-gay marriage group in 2004 with $1.1 million, [Seattle Storm chief operating officer Karen] Bryant made a pitch to Bennett to purchase the Storm.

According to sources, Bryant, the team's former general manager who was re-assigned within the organization when Anne Donovan was given total control, suggested that the team?s large lesbian fan base may make it uncomfortable for him as an owner if he kept the team. Bryant wants to keep the Storm in Seattle.

Bennett rejected Bryant's offer, sources say, because, while he may not want to relocate the Storm, he felt at the time it gave him more leverage with the Legislature.

"Did we have the conversation (regarding his intention for the team)? Yeah. But it was very early on and he said he had every intention of keeping the franchises together," Bryant said.

At the time, of course, Sonics/Storm spokespersons insisted that the donations were no big deal.
In oddly related news, Jim Roth, the openly gay Oklahoma City politician (the only such politician in state history, apparently), who came to the defense of his campaign contributors, oil company executives McClendon and Bennett, was given a plumb state job. Where? On the board that oversees the state's massive oil industry.

Labels: business, Seattle, sports

Matt Barber's job at the right-wing activist group Concerned Women for America seems to be to get mad about something and write a bleating press release or blog post about said maddening matter. His official title is Policy Director for Cultural Issues. His oddly reasoned missives turn up frequently on blogs that keep track of these kinds of things like Pam's House Blend and -- with a very different style, but similarly unrelenting focus -- G.A.Y.

We'd usually leave the tracking of the right-wing rantings to them, but one of Barber's posts popped up on our screeners because it mentioned that local coffee outfit, Starbucks. Apparently, it was a slow week for Barber after the hate crimes bill passed. So slow, that he was reduced to reading the stuff printed on his Starbucks cups. And he still doesn't like what he sees there.

Java giant Starbucks finds itself entangled in yet another brewing controversy over its "The Way I See It" campaign. Starbucks has a history of placing liberal, pro-homosexual and anti-God statements submitted by customers, celebrities and other public figures on the side of its coffee cups for customers to contemplate while they wash down a muffin with a Frappe-Mocha-whatever.

Although the company has every right to do what it wants with its cups, one questions whether it makes good business sense to intentionally alienate a large percentage of the coffee drinking public with these inflammatory political musings. Many customers with traditional values find it quite offensive. Although the company has used some religion oriented statements in the past -- such as one by Purpose Driven Life author Rick Warren -- the preponderance of politically and spiritually themed quotes that make the "cup cut" seem to represent a hard-left ideology.

I know... it's difficult to believe that a company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, would labor under such a leftist bent, but sadly, such is the case.

Yikes! Seattle! Here offers the name of our town as though the good chief's name alone is enough to get his readers riled.

Barber offers several examples of the "hard-left ideology" he found on the cups. Among them:

The Way I See It # 43 ? "My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too d*mn short." -- Armistead Maupin, Homosexual Novelist

Barber suggests that his readers should submit their own (presumably hard-right) alternative quotations to a Starbucks website. His offering:

The Way I See It # ?? ? "Why do so many in our fallen world revile God's natural order when it comes to marriage, family and human sexuality? Why do we encourage wicked pride in a morally bankrupt, high-risk lifestyle that's anything but 'gay'? Why do we shake our fist with hate at perfect Love? Life is short -- but it's never too late for change."

Hmm. Maupin just seems nicer, somehow.

Given the genesis of the company's name, we'd like to see this admittedly complex sentence from Moby Dick:

"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own." -- Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Ch. 49

We suspect that Barber would feel better about Starbucks if he'd run across this Chicago "partner" described in a letter to Windy City Times. (Although the situation described appalls us.):

When I approached the counter to order my drink, an employee was sitting at a table, apparently on his break, talking to another employee who was making a drink for him. I walked up just as he was telling her that, because she is gay, she is no different from a serial killer or a child molester. The woman responded by saying that she was the way God made her and that certainly wasn't wrong in her opinion. At that point, he walked up to the counter to get his drink, looked at me, and said: "I'm just sayin' it's evil."

Labels: activism, business, link bites, Seattle

Boise-based Micron Technology, Inc. -- Idaho's largest employer -- today announced that it will adopt new workplace rules for all of its employees that ban discrimination based on an employee's or applicant's sexual orientation.

The move comes after shareholder activism by the New York City Pension Fund System, Seattle's Pride Foundation, and other shareholder groups. New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. filed a shareholder resolution at the company's annual meeting in October last year. A 55% majority of shareholders supported the resolution, an uncommonly high percentage for that kind of measure.

In a letter to Comptroller Thompson on Tuesday, Micron's vice president of human resources, Patrick T. Otte, wrote, "Following conversations with our shareholders regarding nondiscrimination in the workplace, the Micron Board today revisited its equal opportunity employment policies and came to a decision to add sexual orientation to its nondiscrimination language."

The company said in its letter that the change would make their policy consistent across all their work sites, since its California employees already have sexual orientation protections. The company was also in the process of revising it nondiscrimination policies at its Oregon site to include sexual orientation following recent changes in the state law. [Advocate]

The change represents a reversal for the major chip-maker. Last week, the company announced that its board of directors would ignore the shareholder resolution directing them to adopt the non-discrimination policy.

Despite the vote, Micron's general counsel said this month that the company would ignore the vote and not revise its policies because it feared "expanded legal liability."

The company had also been slow to announce the vote, according to an updated press release [pdf format] today from Pride Foundation.

Earlier this month, Micron Technology, a maker of semiconductors, headquartered in Boise, Idaho, disclosed a whopping 55.5% shareholder vote in favor of sexual orientation protections. This was only made public when the company filed its required 10-Q on January 16th. Management had remained curiously mute about the vote's percentage after its annual meeting last October.

The Advocate story [#] about the refusal of the Micron board to honor the shareholder vote might have put additional pressure on the company.

Another company that hasn't yet adopted non-discrimination rules, Commercial Metals, based in Irving, Texas -- a worldwide metals manufacturer -- announced a similar resolution had garnered a 43% vote, according to Pride Foundation. That company hasn't yet said what it will do in response to the vote.

Pride Foundation notes that the votes represent a changing environment.

Both instances represent an upward spiral in support for inclusive policies for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers. Since 2001 companies have seen percentage votes on this issue creep higher and higher, Historically shareholder resolutions on social issues usually receive votes in the 5-15% range. Only once, in 2002, Cracker Barrel, after a public outcry, significant media attention and ten years of proxies and prodding, received a vote of 58% in a year where other resolutions votes were in the low teens.

"Corporate shareholders are increasingly demanding that their companies judge workers not based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, but solely based on their qualifications and job performance," said Meredith Benton, Research Associate at Boston-based Walden Asset Management.

In its press release, Pride Foundation explained its involvement in the issue:

Pride Foundation has been a leader in this particular brand of shareholder activism. The nonprofit, which provides funding for gay and lesbian issues in the Pacific Northwest, leverages its ownership of public companies through its endowment to advance social change. The first success came in 1997, when the organization convinced MacDonalds to change its corporate policies to include sexual orientation. Since then Pride Foundation has filed numerous shareholder resolutions and has added General Electric, Wal-Mart and Emerson to its list of successes. Zachary Wright, Pride Foundation board member and chair of its Shareholder Activism Committee, represented the Micron shareholder resolution on behalf of the New York City Pension Fund, which filed the resolution this year.

"A simple change to the non-discrimination policy costs a company almost nothing, but can reduce employee turnover, help recruiting efforts, boost employee morale, and show it is in step with its industry and its competitors," said Wright. "Certainly there are solid business reasons in favor of adopting an inclusive policy, but basically we believe it is simply the right thing to do."

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(It's a sign of the embarrassment that SOAP has brought to others that the Pride Foundation has found it necessary to post this notice on its home page.

Pride Foundation not associated with Seattle Out and Proud
In the wake of the announcement that Seattle Out and Proud, producers of Seattle's pride parade, is filing bankruptcy, Pride Foundation wants to remind the community that we are not associated with the group. Pride Foundation is a community-foundation that supports the LGBT and allied communities via grants and scholarships, and does not produce any parades.

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Labels: activism, business, gay organization, Seattle