Negotiators Discuss Benefits for Partners

Due to a production error, part of this story was omitted from the July 17 issue of The Crimson. The story is reprinted here in its entireity.

Union and management representatives met last week to discuss the possibility of providing health care benefits to domestic partners.

Leaders of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers say Harvard will set a new precedent for universities if it becomes the first to offer long-term homosexual couples the same health benefits it gives its married employees.

"Harvard is a leader in many different areas," said Anna Kent, a member of the union's executive board and of the negotiating team. "There's room for leadership there."

Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs John H. Shattuck said management is assessing the issue of health care benefits.

"All proposals and issues that have been raised are under consideration," he said.

According to members of the union, management's current objections to the plan are fiscal, not moral.

The issue initially arose during the first union contract negotiations in 1989, said union member Jennie H. Rathbun, who participated in those talks.

"Everybody at the table, on both sides, agreed that it was essentially a fairness issue," Rathbun said.

At that point, negotiators agreed to form a joint union-management committee to examine health care issues, which began to work last year, said Rathbun, a member of the committee.

According to documents obtained by The Crimson, the committee studied five corporations that offer health care benefits to their employees' domestic partners: Levi Strauss, Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc., Lotus Development Corp., the City of Berkeley, Calif. and the City of Seattle.

Each of these companies enacted the policy in order to promote policies of non-discrimination. Each received a lower participation rate than it expected, the documents say.

Rathbun said that if the plan takes effect, it will not be greeted with a flood of new participants. Many people's domestic partners, she said, are already working and are already insured.

The issue, Rathbun said, is "a question of equal work for equal pay. You're really giving someone a much bigger compensation package basically based on whether they're straight and married."

Right now, the idea is novel, said Union President Donene M. Williams. But "in 10 years, it's not going to be an option. Everybody's going to have it."

"We're interested in being able to cover all kinds of domestic partners," Williams said. That includes siblings, the elderly and heterosexual couples, she said.

"This is not simply a dollars and cents issue," Williams said. "It will mean Harvard's serious when they say 'we won't discriminate.'"

In 1989, Rathbun said, the University did not offer any resistance along moral or philosophical grounds. Only mechanical questions--"little, not-too-terrifying problems, things you could work out with the help of a tax lawyer"--got in the way, she said.

According to Rathbun, the University is concerned about adding benefits at the same time health care costs are increasing.

Rathbun said that the management's "bottom-line fear" is AIDS. And employers often "don't have the guts" to face the possibility of employees or partners with AIDS, she said.

Under the current policies, Rathbun said, her domestic partner of four years is "virtually uninsured"--covered by a "pathetic" policy that costs $100 a month and will cover only one treatment for any illness.

"Because she's virtually uncovered, any kind of preventative medicine or checking out something early, we wouldn't do, because it's going to involve a really big doctor's bill," Rathbun said. "She's reasonably young and healthy, she's only 34, but her luck isn't going to hold out forever."