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GAY-MARRIAGE BENEFITS
Inconvenience stores
BY KRISTEN LOMBARDI

It may be the biggest unanswered question in the wake of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts: how will the state’s employers treat gay married couples when it comes to employee-benefits plans?

The answer is, at least for one major Bay State employer — Cumberland Farms, in Canton, which operates 900 or so gas stations and convenience stores throughout the Northeast — not very well.

Last month, Bay Windows broke the news that the retail chain will deny medical and dental coverage to legal spouses of its gay and lesbian employees, after an internal memo outlining the new policy was leaked to the paper. As reported in Bay Windows, a May 12 memo to employees justifies the company’s decision not to recognize same-sex marriages when determining employee benefits by explaining that it is permitted to do so under federal law. Because Cumberland Farms "self-insures" its employees and pays for the cost of their health-care coverage directly, it does not have to abide by any state laws, including the Supreme Judicial Court’s November 2003 ruling granting marital rights to same-sex couples. By contrast, companies with health plans such as Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Blue Cross Blue Shield do.

Technically, Cumberland Farms is correct. Michelle Granda, a staff attorney at Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), which litigated the case that led to the SJC’s ruling, says that self-insuring companies are governed by a federal law known as the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, which mandates how employers must dole out such benefits as health-care coverage and pension plans. And nothing in that law requires companies to cover spouses of gay and lesbian employees.

Yet nothing prohibits it, either. In other words, Cumberland Farms "is deliberately discriminating against its gay and lesbian employees," says Granda. "It’s using federal law as an excuse to discriminate."

Certainly, that’s how the move is being perceived. Tom Barbera, who represents gay and lesbian union workers for the AFL-CIO, was outraged as soon as he learned of the company’s decision. "This is a gross violation of worker rights, and a blatant act of discrimination," he says. A member of the Gay and Lesbian Labor Activist Network (GALLAN), Barbera decided to pen an open letter stating as much, which appeared in Bay Windows on June 18. He and GALLAN activists have since written letters and made phone calls to Cumberland Farms president Lily Bentas denouncing the no-benefits policy for gay married couples. Last week, they ratcheted up their efforts by staging a protest at a popular store located just outside Cambridge’s Porter Square. Several dozen activists showed up on Thursday evening armed with signs that read cumberland farms: discrimination against glbt people and cumberland farms: doesn’t recognize glbt marriages. They distributed fliers to customers and implored passers-by to "tell Cumberland Farms that you don’t support its discriminatory policy."

Company executives have met the public pressure with silence. (The company did not return a phone call from the Phoenix seeking comment.) But this has not deterred activists, who see last week’s protest as the first of many to come. Already, GALLAN is planning demonstrations outside Cumberland Farms locations in Provincetown. The area’s consumers, says Harneen Chernow, who serves on GALLAN’s steering committee, "need to know about the practices of the shops that they patronize." Meanwhile, national gay-labor coalitions, such as the AFL-CIO’s Pride at Work, are contemplating a boycott of the company.

Activists say that they’ll keep up the pressure until Cumberland Farms reconsiders its discriminatory policy against gay married couples. Or, at the very least, until company executives get the message that, as Chernow puts it, "This kind of action in this state is not okay."

"Whether you’re gay married or straight married, you should be treated the same by your employer," Chernow adds. "That is what it means to be in Massachusetts."


Issue Date: July 9 - 15, 2004
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