Back in 1996, San Francisco became the first city in the United States to fundamentally change the way that unmarried partners were treated from an employment perspective. Their equal benefits ordinance (EBO) required all local government contractors to give unmarried partners of employees the same benefits that were provided to a spouse. Since then, no less than 16 other cities, along with the state of California, have brought similar laws into effect.
It is important to understand that these laws only apply to companies that do business with the legislating authority. For example, if someone like San Francisco entrepreneur Rick Bolander were to start a business that offered communications services to the city of San Francisco, then that business would be required to comply with the ordinance. On the other hand, if that business only sold to corporations in the San Francisco area, then there would be no requirement to provide equal benefits.
When enacting these laws, local governments cited several positive effects that the regulations would have. For example, Minneapolis stated that, “Requiring contractors to provide to employees with domestic partners benefits equal to those provided to employees who are married will require contractors to maintain a competitive advantage in recruiting and retaining the highest quality work force.” This was almost identical to the justification that Los Angeles used for their EBO, and both Oakland and Sacramento echoed similar sentiments. On the other hand, opponents argued that compliance would in fact cause jurisdictions to either lose contractors or be forced to choose contractors based upon compliance – rather than their ability to deliver. Other objections included the cost and administrative burden of enforcement, and the likelihood of the laws being challenged in court.
Now, more than 15 years later, what has been the impact? A recent study by the Williams Institute at UCLA assessed the implementation of EBOs, as well as their enforcement, in order to understand whether the arguments that were made against them originally were valid. They also looked at whether EBOs have had a positive effect on workplace policies as they relate to the LBGT community.
The first major finding of the report is that there is almost complete compliance – and there has been almost no resistance from contractors. Interestingly, the few instances of push back from contractors were related to providing benefits for different-sex couples. There was no resistance to providing benefits to LGBT partnerships.
Furthermore, there have only been two enforcement actions related to EBOs since they were introduced. Los Angeles reported a single case where a complaint was filed, but the contractor was not barred from bidding on future work because of it. Back up in the Bay Area, Oakland did have one large contract that was terminated for lack of compliance.
The other major finding was that the disruption that had been predicted due to the introduction of EBOs did not materialize. None of the local governments that implemented these laws reported a difficulty finding qualified contractors, and there were no reports of any excessive administrative effort.