That’s not the headline the Globe chose today – they chose, instead, “Gay rights advocates question Patrick; Domestic partner benefits at issue.” But the 16th paragraph of the 16-paragraph story says:
United became the first US airline to grant domestic partner benefits to its employees and retirees worldwide.
Huh – interesting. That’s not the impression you’d get from reading the first 15 paragraphs. There’s additional detail in a longer piece in Bay Windows (which preceded the Globe article), describing
the decision by United Airlines in September 1999 to institute a groundbreaking company-wide domestic partnership program that offered a package of benefits to the same-sex partners of its employees that was equal to the benefits offered to the spouses of its married employees. The airline also undertook a major ad campaign in the LGBT press touting its commitment to the community.
The issue in both articles is Deval Patrick’s role as a United Air Lines board member in UAL’s provision of domestic partnership benefits to gay employees (MavDem has already discussed the Bay Windows story).
The facts, based on the Globe and the Bay Windows stories, are these. Patrick joined the UAL board in October 1997. Prior to that time, San Francisco passed an ordinance (it was passed in 1996 and took effect in June 1997) declaring that anyone contracting with the city (which UAL did because of its hub at the SF airport) had to provide the same benefits to gay domestic partners as they did to married spouses. UAL was already contesting the requirement when Patrick joined the board. The issue festered for months, with various groups on both sides getting more and more irritated with each other (boycotts, media campaigns, the whole drill).
According to Patrick, the issue did not reach the board until sometime in 1999. At that point, says the Globe,
Patrick said he raised two issues during a “rigorous debate” on the board about the legality and fairness of the ordinance. He said he urged the company to change its policy because it was the fair thing to do.
“My view was it was right to do domestic partner benefits,” Patrick said. “I advocated for — successfully — that we provide these benefits companywide…. The good thing about this whole controversy is it also raised a serious policy question. And on the policy question the board got it right, and I’m proud about that.”
So, um, I’m not really seeing the problem here. Maybe UAL should have handled the litigation differently in the early going. But that doesn’t appear to be Patrick’s fault – it started before he got there; there’s no evidence that the board was involved before 1999; and matters like that would, I’d think, normally be handled by the CEO and the General Counsel, not the board. When the board gets involved, they do two things: (1) they tell UAL to continue pursuing the legal case because they don’t want to comply with a million municipal employment ordinances; and (2) they change their domestic partnership policy company-wide, becoming the first airline in the country to offer full domestic partnership benefits.
An activist from San Francisco sees it differently, according to the Globe. He says that “People who feel passionately about things will resign from boards they disagree with” (obviously implying that Patrick should have quit). And what, exactly, would that have accomplished? Most likely, it would have removed from the board one of the loudest voices for adopting a company-wide domestic partnership policy, possibly resulting in UAL’s not leading the way on this issue after all. And that would have been good for the gay community how, exactly?
Rep. Cheryl Coakley Rivera (D-Springfield), a Reilly backer, says that Patrick “is hiding behind the law to discriminate.” Respectfully, Cheryl, no. He told the company to change the policy, because its current policy was discriminatory – and he was successful. The legal point is different. UAL argued, and Patrick apparently agreed, that UAL shouldn’t have to comply with every municipal benefits ordinance, since it does business in a lot of places. Turns out that UAL lost on that legal argument. But I’ve said all along that these technical legal points need to be kept distinct from the policy points if we want law to be kept distinct from politics – and we do. I backed Tom Reilly when he certified the gay marriage amendment – he was right on the law (as the SJC later confirmed), and I think Patrick and others were wrong to trash Reilly at the time for doing what he did. But Reilly backers like Rivera are in an awfully funny position trashing Patrick for doing exactly what Reilly – correctly – did just a few months ago.
UPDATE: Mike over at Mass Marrier has similar thoughts.
David writes:
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I know this has been discussed before, but I think this underscores a fundamental weakness of “leftward wingnuts” who seem allergic to anything remotely corporate: They tend to prefer screaming for change from the outside as opposed to diligently working for change from within a corporation.
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Frankly, to be successful at changing any sort of corporate policy you need both approaches: Activists pushing change from the outside, and principled folks like Deval who realize they can best make a difference by working hard within a corporation to convince it to do the right thing. I can’t imagine it’s an easy job, but it proves the DP is the kind of guy will stick up for what he believes in, even if the odds seem stacked against him.
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In my opinion, Deval has never left his principles at the boardroom door.
Gosh, d’ya think?
I forgot my “facetious” emoticon:
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;p
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I don’t think Deval could have put it better himself. đŸ˜‰
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Sorry, Tim Little – just feel like I’m getting alot of sanitized Deval Patrick talking points/candidate promotion these days.
I wrote a diary on this issue yesterday. Many of the same facts were included in that diary as well as the give-and-take of the comments, which David participated in. It addressed the Bay Windows article, DOMA, and even the Boston Globe piece. That post lingered without promotion. Now, lo and behold, the issue is reframed and delivered with a headline that would make Deval Patrick blush! Next time I’ll include a reference to “Killer Coke.” That seems to be the currency of the day. Where to begin. . .
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David suggests that Deval Patrick isn’t accountable for United’s legal position because he wasn’t on the board when litigation commenced and the airline’s legal work would likely have been handled by their General Counsel. OK, well how does that square with the fact that, by Deval Patrick’s own account, he supported the company’s legal position and continues to do so? (“ThatÂ’s the right legal position by the way, at least in my view.” – DP) Deval Patrick is apparently not accountable for his own positions, I guess. And, by the way, who does the General Counsel work for? Usually the CEO. Who does the CEO work for? Usually the Board of Directors.
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Then there is the issue of timing. . .The ordinance took effect in June 1997 and Deval Patrick joined the Board in October 1997. The airline appears to have filed suit in May. So, David is correct, Deval Patrick joined the board after the airline’s suit. . .about five months after. However, Patrick served on the board for 21 of the 26 months in which the airline was involved in litigation.
Patrick claims that the issue only came to the board in 1999. That is possible. The board may not have had an actionable item until that point in time. But does that mean that Deval Patrick wasn’t even aware of the issue? Is it possible that, after leaving the nation’s top civil rights post and joining UAL’s board of directors, Deval Patrick was completely unaware that his company was the subject of highy contentious litigation and a nation-wide boycott surrounding its failure to comply with a San Francisco ordinance requiring domestic partnership benefits? I’m sorry, but that is incredibly difficult to believe. Possible? Sure. Plausible? Not likely.
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Speaking of that boycott, it apparently was apparently quite effective. So effective, in fact, that Business Week concluded that the company’s economic loss was the real basis for United Airline’s decision to offer benefits:
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Leave it to a business magazine to declare the obvious: the company operated to preserve its bottom line, not to change the world.
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Finally, of course, there is David’s strong innuendo that “Patrick led United to blaze trail for domestic partnership benefits.” Umm, how do we get there? From the record it appears that “Patrick joined airline’s board of directors, supported its position to oppose the San Francisco ordinance, which resulted in a public relations mess and economic loss, sending the company into damage control” would be a more accurate headline.
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One final thought: David chastises Cheryl Rivera for supposedly employing some form of a double-standard. I think the criticism is misplaced. Despite Deval Patrick’s heavy criticism of Tom Reilly’s decision to certify the same sex marriage question, a unanimous SJC supported the AG. Deval Patrick never retracted those statements, but now he wants the benefit of hiding behind a legal argument. United was the only major airline to fight San Francisco’s ordinance. Their position was so progressive that a federal judge ultimate combined it with a similar suit brought by Pat Robertson’s organization. Yes, that Pat Robertson. And, in United’s case, a federal court ultimately determined that the airline had to require some level of benefits to domestic partnerships – hardly as strong an endorsement as a unanimous SJC.
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Since Bay Windows initially raised this issue, I would say the Globe’s headline is a better alternative than that suggested here.
I know you are a Patrick supporter, so that was a classy act.
Why are only Pro-Deval posts being promoted since the endorsement?
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Does BMG only claim to want the participation of ALL Democratic and even the Loyal Opposition?
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Or are only Pro-Deval voices allowed on the soapbox?
And I would have, except that he completely omitted the fact that United adopted a first-in-the-nation domestic partner benefits policy. I thought that left a misleading impression of how the issue ultimately was resolved at UAL. So I wrote my own instead. (My prerogative.)
what you claim I omitted, I pretty much systematically negated your/Deval’s argument, which, in turn, you omitted in your post.
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Sorry, but that is true. I suggest people go back and read our exchange.
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That was, indeed, your prerogative.
I am not sure that the evidence exists to say that Patrick blazed any trails on this issue. The piece in both Bay Windos and the Globe are clearly misguided in that they attempt to portray Patrick in a negative light when in actuality his postion was supportive of getting same sex couples more rights. However, it is also not accurate to make it sound like Patrick was in the boardroom screaming and protesting and “blazing” a path.
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I feel a little at odds with my fellow Patrick supporters on the issue of Patrick’s corporate past because I am not as willing to whitewash, ignore, or distort it as many of them are. I feel as though that the issue hasn’t been adequately addressed. However in saying that I do not mean to suggest that something is nefarious about Patrick’s corporate past. However, I do not feel like he has met the issue head on. The usual tactic has been to let it fizzle away.
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I understand the need to reform companies from the inside is a must sometimes but let’s be honest, Patrick has never done this. United succumbed to a strike and even if the board was offering sage advice telling United to change its woeful ways it wasn’t Patrick alone who did it. Ameriquest required a $350 million settlement and there is debate over whether the company has gotten any better. Coke is still allowing people to be killed, it is still using the same bottlers.
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I am not, as Tim Little describes above, a lefty wingnut. I do have a small aversion to large companies and I am engaging in my own private boycott of Coke and its products but I do not want the abolition of corporations (I would be out of a job if that were the case because I work for an enormous electronics and medical company). However I have always been uneasy with Deval’s corporate background because he has worked for comapanies with such questionable backgrounds that I cannot help but ask why.
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Patrick should acknowledge that his work wasn’t as successful as he hoped, that he went into each situation looking to right a wrong but was generally thrwarted by the bottom line mentality of the companies (in the case of United that mentality may have seemed to help). I think that is the most honest answer and the one most supported by the facts. Instead Patrick supporters try and make him more of a champion than he was and this post by David is a shining example.
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Deval Patrick is our best hope for reclaiming the governor’s office and I think he is a candidate of amazing quality. Why can’t he use his talent on this issue to finally put it to rest?
Perhaps my point could have been made more clearly. Here goes: the Globe headline really doesn’t tell very much of the story. To read the headline, and most of the article, you’d have no idea that ultimately – for whatever reason (I don’t care if it was a boycott or what) – UAL was the first airline to adopt full domestic partnership benefits. My fake headline also doesn’t tell the whole story. But it sure gives a different impression of what’s to come.
That makes complete sense. Most of my point wasn’t directed at you but the corporate issue in general. I think that Deval has let this issue linger too long.
The Boston Globe tried to create a controversy surrounding Deval Patrick’s role on the Board of Directors for United Airlines, the first airline in the country to offer domestic partner benefits to its employees.
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Both newspapers focussed on hypothetical situations in which Deval may or may not have spoken up enough. But what we know is that Deval was in favor of domestic partner benefits, and he is willing to discuss these issues openly. He supports gay rights.. PERIOD. No gay people are questioning his support of gay rights except for a few “a-list gays” who support his insider opponents.
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“ ‘I don’t think Patrick can have it both ways, which is to tout his position on civil rights as a board member and duck this issue,’ said Mary Breslauer, a prominent gay rights activist who supports Christopher F. Gabrieli in the governor’s race. “
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Deval is not ducking this issue. He has stated repeatedly that he advocated for domestic partner benefits. I would like to see how Breslauer feels about HRC and MassEquality (organizations she is very involved with) endorsing republicans and canditates like Joe Leiberman over more supportive ones like Lamont. Breslauer has been involved with rich, white, gay rights organizations that repeatedly endorse candidates who are not 100% pro-gay for decades – so it is of no surprise that she is supporting the richest white candidate for governer who still has some insider ties. The insider ties are important to someone like Breslauer who works with lobbyists and politicians.
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State Representative Cheryl A. Coakley Rivera, a gay Democrat from Springfield who supports Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly in the Democratic primary , said of Patrick: “He is hiding behind the law to discriminate.” Wait a minute!
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Wasn’t Reilly hiding behind the law to discriminate just a few months ago?!
that law that the Supreme Judicial Court – the same court that determined Goodridge – unanimously concluded Tom Reilly correctly interpretted? You must be talking about something else.
Whether or not the SJC said his interpretation was correct or not, he should have first NOT certified those signatures. Furthermore, in my opinion that case could have been argued with several other points that GLAD neglected to bring up.
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I am sure Deval’s interpretation of the law was correct also.
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The bottom line is that it is hypocritical for Reilly supporters to say Deval hid behind the law when Deval was supportive of LGBT rights from day one without question.
I was referring to Deval’s interpretation of the California law while he was on the Board.
… perhaps too late to be addressed in this post: It seems that all of these attacks on his corporate career are coming from the left — that is, critical of corporations; dealing with human rights issues in foreign countries; gay rights, etc.
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On the other hand, Patrick seems to have the liberals sewn up. It’s certainly my distinct impression that folks who would be swayed by these kinds of concerns are not the low-hanging fruit in this race.
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So, are these stories having any effect on the polls whatsoever? I realize the blogosphere is the land of Kool-Aid — or merely those who have made up their minds — but is this stuff taking a toll in the real world? My gut sense is no, but I have absolutely nothing to back that up.
I had always wondered how Rogers intended to get traction given that his obvious base of supporters would generally be anti-corp lefties, a group that seems firmly encamped with Deval. I think I agree with you that this issue is having no bearing on the non-geeky, non-blogosphere types but I think that is because Gabs and Reilly have completely failed to “exploit” it for its true potential. The issue has the possibility of looking like a major hypocrasy (that is not my opinion but I see how it could be spun) to the “not politics as usual” Deval.
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Luckily Tom Reilly has the political finesse and skill of Ralph Nader and Gabrieli just doesn’t seem the type to take advantage of the issue.
the curious thing is that the corporate stuff has come, for the most part “from the left” but not from the Left–not from people who actually think that serving on corporate boards is, prima facie, A Bad Thing. (Ray Rodgers is an exception.)
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The reason why these arguments have had no traction with the left wing is that (1) the accusations lack actual substance and (2) are opportunistically made by people who probably don’t believe they have merit.
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Further more, (3) we progressive democrats are not so credulous and, well, dumb as Reilly’s staff supposes us to be.
If there’s been any effect. I’m looking forward to the next poll. Everything in my gut and brains says they’re about the same. If that’s the case, I’m very, very confident about Deval’s chances in September.
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Hopefully Deval’s commercials will get better. I really have to say that while most of Gabs commercials have been a bore, it seems like he took the criticism and made a really cute/funny one with who are I think his kids… I actually giggled.
This isn’t some big ideological conspiracy. The only record Deval has of any note is in the private sector. His work for Clinton was nearly invisible (not saying bad, just invisible), and he has absolutely no elected experience.
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What should we be talking about, his poor choice of ties? It is telling, however, that Reilly has a more extensive, much more public record. And what do we get from that? Critiques of his ability to run a campaign.
’cause there’s no reason we’d want the Chief Executive of the Commonwealth to be able to, you know, run anything.
In the age of Mitt Romney and George W Bush, I don’t know how anyone could think that private experience counts for squat in elected government.