In an equal rights fight going back ten years, victory can be claimed once and for all by FAU’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employees.
This year is the first time that FAU’s LGBT employees can be reimbursed for their domestic partner’s health insurance, if they receive insurance through the university.
It started back in March 2003, when FAU’s United Faculty Senate, a voting body of more than sixty professors, passed a motion seeking domestic partner benefits. It was not until the university’s thirteen highest-ranking officials, the Board of Trustees, and the faculty union chapter on campus, the United Faculty of Florida signed a new Collective Bargaining Agreement in June, that benefits were extended.
“These things unfortunately take time, fortunately the Union was persistent and this is what they got,” Palm Beach County Human Rights Council President Rand Hoch said. As a human rights advocate, Hoch has spent the last 25 years lobbying local and state politicians for LGBT equality.
Openly gay faculty members, like Communications professor Fred Fejes, who teaches a class on sexuality and the media, agree with Hoch.
“Obviously… this is a long time coming,” Fejes said, adding later “FAU is really behind the curve compared to other Florida universities.”
Fejes and Hoch are right. FSU and the University of West Florida, founded in 1851 and 1963 respectively, still do not extend health insurance benefits to domestic partners of their LGBT employees, according to Gaywebsource. Meanwhile, the newest public university in the state, Florida Polytechnic University, split from one of USF’s campuses last year and already includes these benefits.
Under the new three-year Collective Bargaining Agreement, FAU’s LGBT employees can use the sick leave benefits similar to what married employees use, and it allows those employees with domestic partners to use a stipend, since the university cannot offer them insurance directly.
This translates to FAU employees being able to take up to six months of sick leave to care for their domestic partners or their partner’s children. The new sick leave policy and the rest of the domestic partner health insurance program will be in place by mid-August, according to the Human Rights Council’s press release.
“Domestic partner benefits were long overdue at FAU,” UFF-FAU President Chris Robé told Gaywebsource. “Offering domestic partnership benefits is a necessity for any public institution that aspires towards the ideals of equality, access, and fairness.”
The UP previously reported FAU’s anti-discrimination policy protected gay, lesbian, and bisexual students, faculty and staff when the Board of Trustees added “sexual orientation” to the list of protected classes. But since the Board added that to the policy in November 2011, transgender students have been unprotected, as the Trustees never voted to add “gender identity or expression” to the policy.
UF, UCF, FSU, and New College of Florida include both “sexual orientation,” and “gender identity” language in their anti-discrimination policies.
