News :: GLBT
Exxon Refuses to Recognize Gay Rights (Again) by Steve Weinstein
EDGE Editor-In-ChiefThursday May 29, 2008 Already under fire from Congress and consumers for record windfall profits while gasoline prices rise above an historic $4 a gallon, the biggest domestic oil company has continued to take a corporate stance that many oppose both within and outside of itself.
The Rockefeller family, aided by some shareholders such as the New York City comptroller, who controls pension funds for city employees, have been trying to get ExxonMobil to add nondiscrimination against LGBT employees to its corporate governance.
The majority of shareholders, however, didn’t agree; they voted down a proposal to add "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to Exxon’s non-discrimination statement on Wednesday, May 28. Fox Business News reported that about 40 percent of outstanding shares voted in favor of the clause--not enough to send the issue to the oil company’s board of directors.
The shareholder resolution has come up for the past eight years. In 2000, the first year, it got only 8.2 percent. The percentage has grown every year since then. The Human Rights Campaign points to ExxonMobil as the only company they’ve had to use shareholder activism as a way to get the seemingly innocuous proposal before the company’s attention.
"Our conversations with management never went anywhere," HRC spokesman Trevor Thomas told the business channel. That leaves ExxonMobil with what Fox calls "the dubious distinction to be one few major, and certainly the largest, corporation that does not provide protection to its LGBT employees."
EDGE Editor-in-Chief Steve Weinstein has been a regular correspondent for the International Herald Tribune, the Advocate, the Village Voice and Out. He has been covering the AIDS crisis since the early ’80s, when he began his career. He is the author of "The Q Guide to Fire Island" (Alyson, 2007).
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