President Obama signed an order Wednesday afternoon that extends dependant care rights and other benefits to the partners of gay federal employees. That means the federal government has joined the increasing number of employers across the country who provide equal benefits to domestic partners (which are often unmarried opposite sex or same sex partnerships) of their employees.
With this step forward for government jobs, we were curious which private-sector employers offer domestic partner benefits. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) provides a list of private companies that offer such – more than 8,600 businesses are listed. HRC reports that in 2008, 39% of Fortune 1000 companies and 83% of Fortune 100 companies offer partner benefits. For example, Expedia (Fortune 699; 3.4 Company Rating) offers comprehensive health benefits to: opposite-sex spouses, same-sex partners and opposite-sex partners. To top it off, the benefits package at Expedia is frequently noted as a ‘Pro’ among the company reviews on Glassdoor. In fact, close to 20% of Expedia company reviews favorably comment on the benefits offered by the organization.
While Glassdoor is not on the Fortune 1000 list – yet – we were disappointed there wasn’t a public list to promote our domestic partner benefits and figured there are many smaller companies in the same boat. Does your company offer domestic partner benefits and is not included on the HRC website? We’d love to help you promote the benefit to prospective employees. Let us know by commenting on this post or tweeting @glassdoordotcom. Please be sure to provide the employer name, URL and the location of the headquarters. Our hope is greater transparency will help contribute to equal rights for all.
