Wal-Mart Joins the Parade

OK—so they did it.

It’s a little late for me, since Wal-Mart laid me off over two years ago, but it will be great for the rest of the gay and lesbian associates who are still clinging to their job. Now, those associates can put their husbands, wives, domestic partners on the health plan.

What happened? Did a great liberal wave sweep through the corporate home offices in Bentonville, Arkansas?

Nah—it happened as Mr. Fernández said it would. It got too complicated, for one thing, to figure out what state allowed for domestic partners, what state allowed for marriage equality, when one state would institute marriage equality. Oh, and what to do about a married gay guy living across the river in Minnesota but working in a store in Wisconsin?

That was one thing. The other thing? Talent—and how to attract it. OK, retail is not like academia, which arguably has a higher percent of gays and lesbians than retail. But you’d be surprised—I was—by the number of LGBT folk in high positions in Wal-Mart. And how do you attract a key person away from Costco when Sam’s won’t put her or his partner on the health plan?

That—if memory serves—was also the gist of a letter sent to the Wisconsin legislature by the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents. Yes, the UW’s History Department has traditionally been very strong. But several high-powered historians had turned down the UW to go teach at Harvard, since Massachusetts was the first state to allow gay marriage, and remains in the vanguard.

Or what do you do when you’re transferring an employee from Massachusetts to Mississippi? His compensation package is going to change, if he can no longer put his husband on the health plan.

Lastly, and Wal-Mart admits it—they held out until the very end. Of the 30 top retailers, only two (Publix and a chain I’ve never heard of) are not offering benefits to same-sex couples.

I wish there were any pleasure in this for me, since I battled for several years to put Raf on the health plan. Instead, he paid several thousand dollars more to be covered under Cobra, when his old job folded. And he is now paying several thousand more from his old job to cover me, since my job folded, and Raf’s current employer—like Wal-Mart—doesn’t allow him to put me on the health plan.

But it’s hardly the money issue that makes me so sour on hearing this news.

I defended the company when I worked for it, for nearly 10 years. Does it pay its workers badly? Yes—and with the exception of Costco—so do all the other retailers. Does it have a disproportionate number of part-time workers? Again, no more so than the rest. Does it fight tooth and nail against unions? Absolutely.

We would have, in fact, seminars on what legally we could say to employees on the topic of unions. No, we couldn’t threaten to fire either individuals or close the store if an employee advocated for unions, or if the store joined one. But we could explain the company policy, which went something like, “Wal-Mart has the open door policy, which is a way to assure that management and workers communicate and come to an agreement.”

Well, I used that policy to press Wal-Mart to put Raf on the health plan. And, be fair, I was listened to, treated respectfully, and told “no.” Be more fair—the policy only promises that you’ll be heard, not that you’ll get what you want.

The problem I have is the strong-armed tactics. Ten current and former employees were arrested in front of the Washington DC offices of Wal-Mart, recently. And even worse, some 60 or 70 associates have been fired or disciplined for traveling to Bentonville during the annual meeting to protest conditions in the stores.

And Sam Walton would be reeling in his grave at the thought of employees risking their jobs to bus into Arkansas to raise grievances, while the top management was having what is essentially a huge party. Why? Because the Walton family owns about 60% of the stock. So yeah, they have to have an annual meeting—big deal.

Oh, and that 60% of the stock? That’s equivalent to the amount of money owned by the bottom 40% of the American people.

So would Sam Walton be at the party, or would he be outside, listening.

No question in my mind….      

On Becoming a Footnote

OK—it’s 11:22 in the morning and what have I done?

Well, it must have been the fatigue following the exertion of becoming, with Mr. Fernández, a footnote in the legal history of Puerto Rico—that must be what’s operating, here.

It was in 2008 that, on a cold December morning, Rafael and I walked into the Cambridge City Hall to get married. Had we made an appointment? Of course not. So the secretary sighed, and called the justice of the peace, Margaret Drury, down to marry us.

Every trip to the altar—even when there’s no altar—is a long one. In our case, it was physically a long trip; I had spent the early part of the week in Wisconsin with my mother, who was recovering from open-heart surgery. I had flown out of a huge snowstorm, missed a flight in Miami, gotten back home, confirmed our flights to Boston—and discovered that Expedia had botched one leg of the journey. We eventually flew to New York, and took the bus to Boston. And then the snow began—the storm I had flown out of from Wisconsin I had bussed in into Boston.

I was still on edge on the day of my marriage—it had seemed unreal, somehow. But I had told my boss, the director of Human Resources, that I was getting married—and to whom. She asked how long we had been together, and I told her: twenty five years. “It’s high time,” she said. Later, meeting her in the crowded lunchroom, she kissed me, wished me a good trip, and bustled off to wash her hands. Glancing over her shoulder, she called out, “and congratulations on…the other thing!”

And so we referred to our wedding as “the other thing,’ throughout the trip.

I had told her, because I knew perfectly well what I was going to do: ask the company to put Raf on the health plan. He was between jobs—and his Cobra payment was a couple hundred dollars easily over what I would pay to put him on my company’s health plan.

So I found myself, after we returned, with my boss and the president of the largest company on the island—Wal-Mart Puerto Rico—arguing that if we had a statement in the Employee Handbook stating that we didn’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, shouldn’t gay spouses be included in the benefits? “I think you should,” said the president.

It was the first time anybody had raised the issue to him.

Was it easy to do that? No—my hands were wet, my mouth was dry, I was in the classic fight or flight response.

I also knew that I would do it, that I was right, and that if I didn’t do it, I was letting the next generation down. Drag queens fought in Stonewall for me, and if they can fight cops with Billy clubs, I could talk to a Colombian man in a small office in Puerto Rico.

My request was denied, of course, on the grounds that my marriage was not legal in Puerto Rico. OK—so I wrote requesting reconsideration from Bentonville. Oh, and I wrote a letter to the executive vice president for Human Resources for the entire company.

This is called rattling the cage, and somebody has to do it.

Bentonville never replied, so I sent a certified letter. That got a response.

So it became a tradition, in those last years of my time there—I would formally petition to put Raf on the health plan, and present my marriage certificate.

“What do you want me to do with this?” my buddy Karen would ask.

“Oh, just send me the same letter you sent last year,” I’d say.

“Ay, Marc….”

If the Internet were working, I could tell you who said, “courage is a muscle that becomes stronger with exercise.” Recently, I came out to a room full of strangers, blurting out, “Sweetheart, I’m your husband, not your friend,” after Raf, about to read a poem of my mother’s, referred to me as a friend. The whole room laughed—look, how threatening is a roomful of poets?

So it was natural to me, to protest when a notary public, in preparing a deed for an apartment I bought, referred to me as soltero, or bachelor.

“No, I’m married in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” I said.

We went around about it; he explained that legally, I was a bachelor. We signed; I went home and had a drink. The lawyer went home and lost sleep.

In Puerto Rico, property sales are handled by a notary public, who must be as well a lawyer. So the notary public got it into his head—he knew he had to do something. The next day, he called the professional association that rules over the notaries, and asked them the question: what to do about a marriage legal in one state but not in Puerto Rico?

“It was great—they all took the question very seriously, and very respectfully,” said Tony, to give the notary his name.

Even the head of the association, with whom Tony finally ended up….

“Your job as a notary is to record the facts, not judge on the legality,” the director said. “You have to amend that deed, and state that Marc and Raf were married in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And they both have to sign it….” The director went on to speculate—what happens if Puerto Rico is obliged to recognize all marriages from other states, including same-sex marriages?

So we did, but not before asking Tony if they the notary association had ever had the question put to them.

“No,” he said, “they had been waiting for it, but it had never come up. They’re actually thinking of writing a memo to all the notaries on the island, directing them to do what we’re doing. So yours will be the first gay marriage recorded on a legal document in Puerto Rico.”

“You really should spread the word around,” said Johnny, when I called to tell him the news. “There could be other gay people who need to be aware that their marriages need to be recorded….”

So I have!