The Coalition to Protect North Carolina Families

The Amendment is Bad for Business, Causing Real Harm to the North Carolina Economy’s Ability to Attract and Support Businesses in the State.

At a time when our economy is already struggling to grow once again, it does not make sense to create an unnecessary road block for attracting new businesses. If the Amendment would cost us one job, that is one job too many in the current economic climate.

The Amendment Would Negate Benefits for Thousands of Public Employees.

• At present the North Carolina General Statutes authorizes these localities to extend benefits to their employees’ domestic partners. The Amendment would strip these local governments of this authority, such as those currently offered in the City of Asheville, Town of Carrboro, Town of Chapel Hill, City of Durham, Town of Hillsborough, County of Orange, County of Durham, City of Greensboro, and County of Mecklenburg.
• The experience of public employees in Michigan illustrates the dangers of this amendment on public employees: In 2008, the Michigan Supreme Court held that a narrower amendment than the one currently under consideration in NC, “prohibits public employers from providing health insurance benefits to their employees’ qualified same-sex couples.” Although the case only addressed same-sex unions, an earlier opinion from the Michigan Attorney General’s Office suggested that Michigan’s amendment prohibits public employers from recognizing the benefits of opposite-sex couples as well.

In addition to the Amendment’s potential impact on the ability of businesses to enforce domestic partner benefit contracts solely within the private sector, as University of North Carolina Law professor Victor Flatt put it, “the larger economic impact may be based on the perception of what the policy means about the state of North Carolina as a place to live and do business. In this way, even a Constitutional Amendment that apparently would only codify state law could have an effect on business as it changes the perception of the state.”

• Corporate America is a leader in its recognition of the value of gay and lesbian employees and has adopted inclusive workplace policies to attract and retain talent. The Amendment puts these workplace values at risk.

• By the numbers: 89% of Fortune 500 companies prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, including Bank of America, Lowe’s, Duke Energy, BB&T, and Reynolds American (the five largest North Carolina-based public companies in that order).
• Duke Energy cited domestic partner benefits as an important recruiting tool for all employees.
• Over 50 major private companies in North Carolina offer same- sex domestic partner benefits, including Bank of America, the 5th largest Fortune 500 Corporation in America.
• When Charlotte-based Nations Bank merged with then San Francisco’s Bank of America to create the new Bank of America
• oin 1998, one of the pivotal questions in corporate headquarters about the merging of the companies was whether Nations Bank would offer same-sex domestic partner benefits as then-Bank of America did. Then-CEO Hugh C. McColl announced that the new Bank of America would offer such benefits before the merger in 1998 in order to assist in the process and satisfy potential critics and shareholders. While it is not certain that Bank of America’s failure to offer such benefits would have derailed a merger or made the company less productive, it appears that the company’s management at the time believed that it was important to have such benefits.
• Prof. Richard Florida’s book The Rise of the Creative Class provides the general outline about the importance of tolerance and appearing welcoming to GLBT persons for business. According to Florida, those cities and regions that have economically succeeded have done so because they appeal to
• an “educated class.” This class provides many benefits from purchasing power to creativity that make a location a better place to live as well as more attractive to potential employers and employees. Examples include cities such as Austin, Texas, and Seattle Washington. With respect to North Carolina, Florida identified the Triangle Region as benefiting from this trend
• Despite North Carolina’s ongoing economic development efforts, Fortune 500 companies and members of the creative class will be turned off by an this discriminatory amendment in North Carolina. The damage created to business by an environment unsupportive to these creative workers is best illustrated by the now gay-friendly business climate in Massachusetts: creative class individuals in same-sex couples were 2.5 times more likely to move to Massachusetts in the three years after marriage equality than in the three years before. The proportion in the creative class among individuals in same-sex couples who moved to Massachusetts after marriage equality (86%) was nearly double the proportion among those who moved before marriage equality (45%).

This constitutional amendment will not only disadvantage a whole class of people, but it will also reduce our ability to recruit the very best employees to North Carolina.

• The amendment could prevent courts from enforcing private employers’ agreements to provide benefits such as health insurance to employees’ domestic partners and their children.
• The amendment could undermine private employers’ efforts to attract top employees to North Carolina as the courts and public medical facilities may not be permitted to recognize their benefits.
• Increasingly, same-sex couples will “align their ambitions with their best interests in choosing to live and work in states that offer them the full respect and equal treatment under the law they need and wish for their families.” In fact, in a Harris Poll released in July 2011, “78% of all LGBT adults said that, other factors being equal, they would prefer jobs in states that recognize marriage equality. Nearly half went further by saying they would even consider declining job promotions if it required a transfer for themselves or their family to a hostile state or jurisdiction.”

• As a result, this discriminatory amendment not only intrudes on businesses’ rights to provide competitive benefits to their employees but also creates a perception problem: signaling to major employers (and their potential employees) that our state is not welcoming of the diverse, creative workforce that we need to compete in the global economy.
• Not only that, but the anti-LGBT amendment perpetuates a divisive ballot campaign that will divide the state, detract from its image as a welcoming place for businesses and workers, draw polarizing media attention, and create a terrible climate for business, including the travel, tourism, hospitality and real estate industries.

Tell that to Mitchell Gold, the openly-gay entrepreneur who in 1989 brought his home furnishings empire Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams to rural Taylorsville, N.C. Today, the multi-million dollar company employs over 750 people in western North Carolina and provides workers with enlightened employment perks

such as domestic partner benefits and on-site daycare. In a recent statement, Gold said, “One of our most important principles at Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams is to be family-centric and to play a meaningful role in the lives of our employees, their children, and our community. I think our daycare center embodies this philosophy because it provides a place where our young children can be nurtured, protected, and educated, and it gives our working parents the peace of mind that helps them be as productive as possible each day.”

In North Carolina’s current economic malaise, when positive financial news is almost as hard to come by as a job, do we really want to say to local business leaders like Mitchell Gold, “we don’t want you here?”