Fortune 500 Companies Employment Nondiscrimination Policies Against GLBT

Many companies are cracking down on employment discrimination in many ways. In fact, 94.2 percent of Fortune 500 companies voluntarily include sexual orientation in their employment nondiscrimination policies according to Equality Forum, a worldwide gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) civil rights’ organization.

“The Fortune 500 have overwhelmingly decided that including sexual orientation is in the best corporate interest and helps communicate corporate values to the estimated $660 billion annual domestic GLBT consumer market,” said Malcolm Lazin, executive director of Equality Forum.

The federal Employment Non-Discrimination ACT (ENDA) does not offer protection based on sexual orientation, even though 89 percent of Americans believe that gays and lesbians should have equal rights in job opportunities according to a 2008 Gallup poll.

When the Equality Forum began their research in 2003, only 64.6 percent of companies provided nondiscrimination policies within their workplace. But by fall of the next year, 81 percent of these employers offered such policies.

Many GLBT persons have had to keep their sexual orientations private, for fear of reprimand or retaliation by an employer. Albeit, some employers are reaching out to some members of this community via job sites like, www.TJobBank.com, described as the first of its kind to provide employment services to the transgender community.

Visit www.EqualityForum.com/fortune500 for more information about the employment nondiscrimination research and the companies that participated.

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