Essay About Value Of Offering Benefits And Employees’ Spouses

Cost and Value of offering Benefits to Domestic Partnership
Cost and Value of offering Benefits to Domestic Partnership
Introduction
According to Human Rights Campaign Work Net (2006) fringe benefits such
as health and life insurance, a pension or profit-sharing has long been a way for
employers to compensate their workers, and for one company to obtain a competitive
edge over another. While most employers that offer benefits such as health insurance and
dental care also make those benefits available to their employees’ spouses and legal
dependents, the idea of extending such benefits to the domestic partner (DP) of unmarried
employees, including lesbian and gay employees, is a newer concept.
In the American society today, most people think of domestic partnership when it
applies to homosexual relationships. Our team has come to the conclusion that, when
presenting this topic to any corporation, it is essential to include as many different
definitions of domestic partnership as possible. Domestic partner benefits can include
medical and dental insurance, disability and life insurance, pension benefits, family and
bereavement leave, education and tuition assistance, credit union membership, relocation
and travel expenses and inclusion of partners in company events. Employment policies
of corporations should not be designed to change personal values, they are designed to
foster and atmosphere of fairness and professional respect at work. Domestic partner
benefits are equal pay for equal work, a tool for attracting and keeping the best
employees and a means of improving employee productivity.
Domestic Partner Benefits 3
Prior to World War II few companies offered comprehensive benefit programs to their
employees. Of the few that did offer benefits, only the employee was covered not their
family. Families most often depended on fraternal orders and community assistance to
meet their needs. Throughout the decade following WW II, unions fought for and
negotiated benefits for employees and their families. As corporations began to design
their employee benefit programs they used 1950’s sitcom families such as Father knows
Best as models for their definition of family. These policies still are geared more toward
the idealized family model rather than the diverse makeup of households today. As a
result few corporate benefit programs truly meet the needs of many of their employee’s
families. Laws that traditionally define families as individuals related by blood, marriage
or adoption reinforced corporation’s cultural message. Over the next couple of decades
the makeup of families changed even more. The divorce rate increased considerably and
unmarried couples began living together. As couples remarried they found themselves in
blended families with dependent
stepchildren. As a result the legal interpretation of the
term “family” has been used to exclude blended families and domestic partners from vital
legal protections and benefits. In this way the government has helped to protect
corporations from the responsibility of changing and updating their benefit programs to
meet the needs of diverse family formations.
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) was designed to protect
families under employer-sponsored benefit packages, but its creation actually undercut
that protection by allowing employers to put marriage requirements into their benefit
plans. Corporations can now say they follow nondiscriminatory policies, but without
national