92% of Fortune 500 Companies Protect Gays

Everytime there is good news I want to blog about it.

The Equality Forum just released a report showing that now 92% of all Fortune 500 Companies now offer non-discrimination policies to protect GLB workers. Many of those do not fully protect transgender employees but those protections are climbing.

This is terrific news and impresses me greatly. It certainly pisses off the religious right.

The report also found that of the 37 Fortune 500 companies that do not protect GLB workers yet, 38% percecnt of them are in Texas. Big surprise. From the state that gave us George W. Bush and David Koresh.

At the rate that big companies are adding these protections, by 2010 most large companies, even beyond the Fortune 500 will be protecting our community from discrimination.

Of course, a report recently came out showing that even with non-discrimination policies in place, many GLBT people feel they face discrimination at work. So we know that our work is not done after we pass policies. We need to educate and train workers while enforcing policies once there is a violation. Laws need to be passed as an extra layer of protection for these workers.

In Michigan, two municipalities in the past month passed non-discrimination ordinances; Saugatuck Township and Saugatuck, respectively. Last year two more cities passed similar laws; Lansing and Ferndale. But we still need an amendment to the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to make sure that our entire state is protected.

There are 800 municipalities in Michigan. Working for ordinances, city by city, is not the best use of our time. For more information on how you can help email Sean@tri.org.