Anti-LGBT Discrimination Increases Business Costs

One of the mantra's the GOP likes to chant is that anti-discrimination protections increase businesses costs. The truth - of course - is actually just the opposite as a new report demonstrates. Just like the reality of Europe and how it is described by the GOP presidential nominee candidates are very different things. The GOP demagogues also conveniently ignore the fact that anti-LGBT discrimination also often adds to the ranks of those who are unemployed. Yet another inconvenient fact. The Center for American Progress (CAP) documents these inefficiencies and costs in its groundbreaking new report entitled, “The Costly Business of Discrimination: The Economic Costs of Discrimination and the Financial Benefits of LGBT Equality in the workplace.” Here are some excerpts of the findings:

This report examines five core ways in which discrimination imposes significant financial harm on businesses:

• RECRUITMENT: When employers hire individuals based on job-irrelevant characteristics such as sexual orientation and gender identity, businesses are left with a substandard workforce that diminishes their ability to generate healthy profits.
• RETENTION: Discrimination forces otherwise qualified gay and transgender employees out of a job and into the ranks of the unemployed and introduces numerous turnover-related costs. According to a recent study, to replace a departing employee costs somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 for an hourly worker, and between $75,000 and $211,000 for an executive making $100,000 a year.
• JOB PERFORMANCE AND PRODUCTIVITY: Sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in the workplace needlessly compromise maximum labor productivity and workforce output. Moreover, it introduces unnecessary costs by increasing absenteeism, lowering productivity, and fostering a less motivated, less entrepreneurial, and less committed workforce.
• MARKETING TO CONSUMERS: When companies discriminate and allow unfairness to go unchecked in the workplace, consumers increasingly react by actively choosing to do business elsewhere.
• LITIGATION: Businesses are increasingly liable for discrimination lawsuits even in states that have not outlawed gay and transgender discrimination, making discrimination economically unwise for companies in all 50 states. In 2010 the top 10 private plaintiff employment discrimination lawsuits cost firms more than $346 million.

Alternatively, the report unearths how policies that level the playing field for LGBT workers can bring a substantial amount of cash into company coffers. This is why America’s largest and most successful companies have implemented a range of policies that ensure the fair and equal treatment of LGBT workers. Of Fortune 100 companies, 93 percent have nondiscrimination policies that include sexual orientation, 74 percent for gender identity, and 86 percent provide equal partner health insurance benefits.

Despite these facts, the GOP stridently opposes ENDA which would address many of these issues.