Opinion:   “Passage of the Amendment will not keep the State from recruiting new businesses. Neither will the Amendment prevent companies in North Carolina from attracting the brightest and best workers. Companies located in states that have Constitutional Amendments defining marriage as between one man and one woman continue to attract talented workers and grow their businesses. (1)

Fact:    The best way to evaluate the accuracy of these statements is to ask the business community. Thom Tillis, amendment supporter and Speaker of the NC House, has admitting the amendment "may very well" hurt recruitment efforts. A very vocal North Carolina business community, compelled only by business interest, has said that this amendment will make it harder to recruit from the largest possible field of good prospects. If businesses say the amendment is bad for business, we should, as they say, listen to the business owners.

It's easy to get an opinion from business on this: type the name of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) business survey linked here into a search engine. The first few pages of results are press releases from Fortune 500 companies proudly announcing their high ranking on HRC's Survey of gay-friendly businesses. But it's not just private businesses who recruit employees. State and local governments do that as well. As more states formalize rights for same-sex partners, marriage rights become a consideration for more people. During New York’s recent same-sex marriage vote, the leaders of over 30 large businesses, including Goldman Sachs and Bloomberg, argued for marriage equality, saying: a failure to do so would harm their ability to recruit the best and the brightest people." This is why over 80% of Fortune 100 companies (including North Carolina’s Duke Energy, Lowe's, and Reynolds American) already offer domestic partner benefits. Companies offer benefits to attract and retain good employees. Shareholders often put pressure on management, as with Verizon, and Wal-Mart, to end discriminatory policies.

But, the correlations mentioned here between amendments and business cannot be made from the HRC survey results. HRC rates companies according to corporate policy, independent of the DOMA status in the state of corporate headquarters. HRC's rating of North Carolina would be very low, but its rating of Fortune 500 companies in our state could be very high. A Target cashier (100% equality rating) may feel welcome in Vermont, but not in North Carolina. For this cashier, all other factors being equal, a move to Vermont makes more sense. Also, a corporate decision to locate in a state may always depend most on overall business climate, regulation and tax policy, however, it does not necessarily follow that DOMA status is not a factor, as is suggested here.

Ultimately, decisions by any state which reduce the number of people willing to consider a move to the state can only have negative effects on business, because, logically, businesses want to recruit from the largest pool of the 'best and brightest'.

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>> Bloomberg Businessweek June 28, 2011



(*) These are the misleading sources linked from the NC Values Coalition web page ‘opinions’ above:

(1) States like Virginia and Michigan which have the highest level of protection for marriage in their State's Constitutions show numerous companies listed with a 100% rating. Human Rights Campaign, "Best Places to Work: Corporate Equality Index 2011, at http://www.hrc.org/documents/HRC_CEI_2011_Survey.pdf.