ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 29, 1997 TAG: 9701290081
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
SOURCE: Associated Press
A SAN FRANCISCO ORDINANCE requires companies doing business with the city to offer spousal benefits to their workers' spouses - including unmarried or same-sex partners.
Disney has done it. So have Levi Strauss, IBM and American Express.
All offer benefits to employees with domestic partners, many of whom are homosexual. Companies and employees alike say the policy improves morale and sharpens the recruiting edge.
But nobody forced the decisions. Then San Francisco told United Airlines it had to obey an ordinance requiring companies doing business with the city to offer spousal benefits to their workers' unmarried and same-sex partners.
``We're surprised. ... We're disappointed,'' says Mary Jo Holland, a United spokeswoman in Chicago.
Holland said that if United offered benefits in San Francisco, it would have to offer them worldwide. And the company said it had no estimate of what such compliance might cost.
In San Francisco, United employees say they want to be able to offer benefits to their chosen families, straight or not, married or not.
``It's about equality,'' says Kent Bloom, a flight attendant who has worked 22 years for United and hopes to one day offer his benefits to his partner, Mike Ownbey.
The issue arose after United asked for a new 25-year lease to build kitchens and a maintenance facility at San Francisco International Airport. With approval from the Airports Commission, the company started construction, never expecting San Francisco's Board of Supervisors would block the $13.4million project.
There is some question whether federal laws allow a city to drive corporate benefit plans. But other U.S. cities, including Seattle, West Hollywood, Boston and New York, are thinking about similar policies.
Meanwhile, San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano, co-author of the law, is playing down any conflict with United.
``It's been blown out of proportion,'' Ammiano says of the law, which was signed last fall and takes effect in June. ``When people read it, any resistance is greatly diminished.''
The fine print, he says, states that the company in question must offer benefits only to employees who ask and who are registered as domestic partners in cities where that is possible, such as San Francisco and New York.
If United were to adopt such a policy in this country, it would be the first major U.S.-based airline to do so.
This is not a light matter for either the city or the airline. United is a major player in San Francisco. Its facility here, the company's major maintenance hub and gateway to trans-Pacific flights, employs about 20,000 people - almost one-fourth of all United employees worldwide. United traffic accounts for 40 percent of all airline business at the San Francisco airport.
Homosexual employees say the company has treated them well.
``They don't go out there and wave rainbow flags, but they were the first U.S. airline to ban discrimination, and we were the first to form a gay and lesbian group,'' says Thomas Cross, a flight attendant.
But the issue of domestic partners, he says, has caused discomfort.
``They've never just said no,'' Cross says. ``They just looked at us with this blank stare as if to say, `We don't really want to do this; we don't really want to talk about this.'''
LENGTH: Medium: 67 linesby CNB