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A Trans-Walmart Moment has come without much notice, but the moment should be considered significant: Walmart has recently changed their corporate nondiscrimination policy to add gender identity.
From The Advocate‘s article Wal-Mart Adds Trans Protections for Employees:
Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart has added gender identity to their list of protected categories for employees.
Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, already has protections for LGB employees. The additional transgender protections were praised by the Human Rights Campaign…
From the HRC’s press release entitled Human Rights Campaign Applauds Walmart for Adding Gender Identity Non-Discrimination Protections; Nation’s largest private employer sets standard with protections for transgender workers:
The Human Rights Campaign – the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization – today praised Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, for adding gender identity and expression to its employment non-discrimination policy. The company’s nondiscrimination policy already included sexual orientation.
“What matters in the workplace is how you do your job, not your gender identity or sexual orientation,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese. “As the nation’s largest private employer, Walmart shows that doing the right thing is also good for business. We urge them to continue to move forward by ensuring all of their LGBT employees receive equal benefits.”
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation tracks corporate workplace policies and rates companies on their treatment of LGBT employees through the Corporate Equality Index (CEI). The CEI has helped lead a sea-change in the workplaces practices of corporate America by assessing more than 30 specific policies and practices covering nearly every aspect of employment for LGBT workers from non-discrimination protections and the training surrounding those policies to domestic partnership and legal dependent benefits to gender transition guidelines and LGBT employee resource groups. Visit our website at www.hrc.org/resources/entry/corporate-equality-index-2011 for a complete look at the survey. Last year a record 844 American companies and law firms were rated in the CEI.
“Congress needs to follow their lead and make the Employment Non-Discrimination Act the law of the land,” added Solmonese.
My Forever and ever, Amen comment on nondiscrimination protections based on gender identity and gender expression is now going to be “If it’s good enough for Walmart, it should be good enough for you.”
And, it should be.
21 Comments
Not exactly the first trans-walmart moment…
I think a big part of the reason for the disinterest in this new policy is who we’re talking about here. New policy or not, does anyone really believe this will translate into increased hiring and better treatment of transgender employees at Walmarts nationwide? Given how Walmart has historically treated women and members of racial and ethnic minority groups in their employ, I believe this move isn’t getting much attention because no one seriously believes it’ll change Walmart’s actual ground-level employment practices at all.
happy news Autumn, may other mega corps follow suit
So now transgender gets to be treated just as badly as all other WM indentured servants.
Well who would’ve thunk it. Good news indeed. I do wonder if there’s a market angle to this, seems I’ve heard that Walmart’s been having some tough times and it’s hard to believe they’ve experienced some sort of epiphany.
Hellmart still needs to die.
Yep their scorch and burn policy has buried millions of small business. Boycott WM
Walmart is an overall negative force in a number of ways. Their primary problem isn’t the way the treat sexual minorities but the way they treat everyone who works for them, minority or majority.
Call me an asshole, but gender-identification issues are not that hard for the bad guys to deal with. Dick Cheney is one of the big villains of the last half-century, and he’s come out in favor of gay marriage.
He had to wait until he was out of office to do it.
If he’d done so round about, oh, October of 2000 — or even October of 2004 — then he might get some credit from me. But he’s now just a fixture on the right-wing rubber-chicken circuit, hawking his new book to all and sundry.
It’ll be interesting to see if there’s backlash against Wal-Mart from the Fundies. Then again, as Wal-Mart tries to break into the East Coast and the bigger urban areas in general, it wants to try and make itself more appealing to urban consumers, so a Fundie backlash might help the Waltons.
you all hating on Wlamart miss Autumn’s point – think past the greeters to other large corporations following suit.
Thank God, now I can be marginalized and underpaid at Wal-Mart!! YAY!!
Z
Right – it’s the same thing as people hating on DADT repeal.
To my mind, knocking down institutional blocks of discrimination is very, very important, regardless of the institution, and whether one likes what said institution represents or not.
It’s just hard to undo, once done.
I think it odd that ONE company adding gender identity gets a story all it’s own here at PHB. But at the same time a story with much bigger implications (The Social Security Agency no longer sending out “no match” letters outing trans people) wasn’t reported at all.
http://transequality.org/news.html#SSAGenderNoMatchEnd2011
It is happening:
“As the 99% Occupy Wall Street, the 99ers Occupy WalMart” (Bud Meyers, Oct. 1, 2011)
Thanks for letting us know about that.
It’s not strange at all — this was a policy change that wasn’t exactly trumpeted by SSA, which has been trying to avoid giving Republicans on Capitol Hill even more reasons to kill it off. Yours is the first I’ve heard of it.
I’m not giving credit to Cheney, who remains a criminal regardless. He’s still a very bad guy on every issue but that one, and Walmart is still very bad on every issue but one.
Adding gender identity/expression to corporate non-discrimination policies is soooo last decade. If you look at the Fortune 10, Walmart & ExxonMobil were/are the laggards… and while this change is laudable, it remains to be seen whether or not the company culture will line up.
Let’s not forget that Walmart sponsored the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and promptly folded when confronted by the AFA & FRC.
It should also be noted that this change might have resulted in Walmart getting a high or near perfect score on the Corporate Equality Index, this year’s criteria sets the bar much higher by requiring full parity of benefits for same-sex partners AND full coverage of transgender health care.
I think that Walmart made this announcement in anticipation of the upcoming release of their CEI score which won’t be that high.
Has this been confirmed, by Walmart?
Actually, Autumn mentioned it as the first thing in her This & That: Open Thread on Wednesday September 21, which is the first place I read about.
@19 I missed that note. But my point stands: It should have been a story by itself because it’s a major development for trans folk.