More than two decades ago, when gay men and lesbians were prohibited from serving openly in the U.S. military and no state had legalized same-sex marriages, a national LGBTQ+ rights group decided to promote change by grading corporations on their workplace policies.
The Human Rights Campaign initially focused its report card, named the Corporate Equality Index, on ensuring that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer employees did not face discrimination in hiring and on the job. Just 13 companies received a perfect score in 2002. By last year, 545 businesses did even though the requirements have expanded.
But the scorecard itself has come under attack in recent months by conservative activists who targeted businesses as part of a broader pushback against diversity initiatives. Ford, Harley- Davidson and Lowe’s are among the companies that announced they would no longer participate in the Corporate Equality Index.
Can I ask a sensitive question? This question is for LGBTQ+ people who actually work or worked at a company when it adopted or dropped participating in the program. Does the CEI actually have an effect on the company’s workplace tolerance or it is just something they do for appearances? Has a company that decided to drop participating become more intolerant or did they maintain the practices, but maybe considered the program itself an unnecessary expense?
Edit: One more question. If you’re a LGBTQ+ person who works or worked at a company with a good score. Did/does your experience match company’s score?
I work gov side and was in the military. It helped in both places if it was supported by the bosses. Gay jokes stopped in my unit when someone got an instant public talking to when he used the gay f word as a term for the enemy team during an exercise. It made people realize that being ok with gay jokes bread a hostile workplace.
Same reason the military implemented the same training to curb rape and violence against women. If you cultivate an environment that stomps out the small/passive hate, it will show the people that commit hateful acts that they are not welcome.
Now that I work on the civilian side it helps so that the work we do is not hampered by a white male only experience. Others are not afraid to speak up on how decisions, settings, or tech effects people differently.
Worked at a major company you would instantly know the name of.
They were a large corporation but were not public ally traded. Trillions of dollars in assets with more than 60k people employed.
DEI was a MAJOR push, with not just required corporate training but also sessions held often for minority groups of all types to speak their minds in forums about how to connect with them etc.
DEI initiatives and campaigns were a thing, VP of DEI was hired and they had a whole subsection under HR. Corporate events, entertainment, whole virtual bands playing to the theme of inclusion.
This same company did nothing when facing the burning obvious culture of being yes men to their bosses. They did nothing different than most any other massive rich company for how they treated workers, tracking their activity, location, and even physical assess login to buildings for reviews or as excuse to fire.
In an large address by a major leader in the organization I personally gave virtual written innocuous feedback, that they asked for, only to have that be met within minutes with being told never to do that again. The message wasn’t even seen by the speaker. It was just purely culturally unacceptable to offer any constructive criticism of any kind to people in high enough authority.
More than half a dozen people messaged me to tell me they appreciated I gave it public ally and it needed saying. I didn’t know any of them.
So if people are so important and we value voices being heard equally so much, why would you have people desperate to be treated like people and any such statement be met with greats of reprisal?
Yeah. DEI is fan fare in the same way the office cafeteria and gym were. They are designed to entice talent to come or stay while costing the company minimal amounts to do so.
Hm. Of the three companies named, the only one I did business with is Lowe’s.
Did.
CEO of Home Depot is a Trumper and has donated a lot of money to his campaigns.
Are there any better alternatives? Ace hardware doesn’t participate in the Coporate Equality Index either, and TrueValue only has a score of 50 while Home Depot is 45.
I’m not sure tbh. There’s Menards if you want the big conglomorate. For most things there are still the local hardware stores but they may not be close.
A lot of companies are dropping their DEI programs now because they don’t have to do them anymore.
https://www.sbsalaska.com/ and other “small” brands
I tend to favor Ace, just because I have one close by and they’re all franchise stores (which means local ownership of the individual store, at least, which softens the blow of shitty corporate practices).
Menard’s is another option, but I have no idea if they’re any better on this issue than Home Depot or True Value.
I’m past 40 and I’ve never seen so much liberated hate and intolerance. I’m pretty disgusted by the state of the world. Thank capitalism.
This kind of discrimination is literally anti-capitalist. If maximizing profit is the goal, refusing someone for any reason unrelated to how good a worker they’d be (a category everything in the HRC falls under) is counter-productive.
However, if excluding a minority, creates better financial relationships with the majority consumer base, it is in their interest to drop the minority. Capitalism only cares about what seems to maximize profit, and protect it, and if that is benefited by some form of exclusion, that is what will be done.
The vast majority of consumers of the vast majority of companies’ products are completely in the dark about the demographic makeup of its workforce, so even the possibility of this being a factor is minuscule.
I’ve always been critical of corporations ““supporting”” LGBTQ+ rights. Not because I’m opposed to those rights, but because they’re doing it for nefarious reasons.
Companies supporting LGBQ matters is a good litmus test for society’s overall progress. Rainbow capitalism should be looked at with skepticism, but it does mean something.
Companies supporting LGBT matters is a good litheness test
Then they’re often obese as fuck, lol
Seriously… Who gives a fuck if a good thing is being done because it makes someone money vs making someone happy? At the end of the day, the good thing happened. That’s a win. We live in a capitalist society, this should be a very common concept good or not.
Like seriously, who gives a shit if rainbow capitalism was for making money? It absolutely helped at least some (if not many) people feel seen and accepted.
“I would take this vaccine but someone created it because it would make them money so I’m critical”
In what world does that make sense??? As long as you understand WHY they do what they do (thus keeping yourself from being convinced they actually do care lmao), then its all good and take advantage of the good thing as it happens.
I mean… I give a fuck, the intention behind the action is just as important as the action itself.
You argue we should be grateful because a company is participating in rainbow capitalism, and that makes people feel accepted and happy. Fair enough. But if Home Depot spends the other 11 months of the year donating to organizations and political groups that are actively trying to take away the rights of LGBT+ folks…
How is that a win for anyone? Like, are we supposed to jump up and down with joy because a company decided our money was worth accepting for a brief period of time? We’re allowed to exist for one month because it results in a profit increase for a company that actively hates who we are the rest of the year?
In what world does that make sense? “We hate you and want you back in the closet, but we threw a rainbow on this shovel, BUY IT OR YOU HATE LGBT PEOPLE. Cool, now go back in the closet, we’ve got what we wanted out of you.”
It’s patronizing at best, and insulting at worst. You liken it to a vaccine, which is a bad example since, famously, vaccines like Polio were released without a patent to help ensure their widespread use across the globe.
To me, it’s more like “Why are you complaining that this restaurant spits in your sandwich every day? They didn’t spit in it today because it’s Pride, so why aren’t you happy about it?” Because I know in 30 days they’re going to spit in my sandwich again, and they’re only not doing it now because of optics and wanting more money.
