Lear Corporation Offers Gay Employees Domestic Partner Benefits

Lear Corporation will begin offering domestic partner benefits on March 1, reports Pride Source.

The automotive electrical and seating components supplier says the move is a part of an overall effort to diversify and strengthen the company’s workforce.

“We did a review of our benefits, as we periodically do to see where we’re current. And this was a pretty obvious gap. It was about a 30 second meeting to approve it. Pretty much it was ‘Let’s do this; let’s do this now. And we did,” Tom DiDonato, Senior Vice President of Human Resources for Lear, told the publication.

In an email statement sent to HuffPost Gay Voices, Lear Corporation CEO Matthew J. Simoncini wrote:

“It is my sincere belief that our diversity makes us stronger and also makes good business sense. Research consistently shows that fair and equal treatment promotes a business’s ability to attract and retain the brightest and the best employees. Work environments that foster diversity and inclusion, like Lear, can create limitless opportunities for creativity and engagement, ultimately resulting in a competitive advantage.”

According to the email memo, health benefits for same-sex partners of U.S. employees will begin on March 1, 2013.

Lear will be joining the 52 percent of U.S. employers that offer domestic partner health benefits, Kaiser Health News reported. The company has over 100,000 employees and over 200 facilities in 36 countries.

In 2012, benefit consultant Mercer surveyed about 3,000 national employers. According to the consultant company, domestic partner health benefits have gone up from 31 percent in 2010 and have remained steady since 2012.