ExxonMobil shareholders voted down a proposal to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the company’s official equal employment policy during their annual spring shareholder meeting.
This is the tenth year in a row shareholders were presented with the proposal, which only specified sexual orientation initially and was amended in 2008 to include gender identity. The initiative has consistently been voted down, though the amount of support has grown from 8.2 percent in 2000 to 39.3 percent this year, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
ExxonMobil Corporation is the world’s largest integrated oil company, and in the top three of Fortune magazine’s annual list of largest businesses in the U.S, since it was formed in 1999 by the merger of Exxon and Mobil corporations. It is the only Fortune 10 company whose non-discrimination policy does not cover sexual orientation.
Prior to the partnership, Mobil Corporation included sexual orientation in its equal employment opportunity policy, making ExxonMobil the only U.S. employer that has ever rescinded covering sexual orientation in such a policy.
Joe Solmonese, HRC president, concluded in a press release that “while the rest of corporate America recognizes and respects the diversity of their workforce, ExxonMobil continues to resist the most basic protections that should be afforded to all Americans.”
What Do You Think?