United Parcel Service, the fourth-largest private employer in the U.S., illegally discriminates against its lesbian and gay employees by not including them in a corporate policy that lets employees relocate to another city to avoid having their families broken apart when their loved ones have job transfers, Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund said in a lawsuit filed in California state court last week.
Within hours, the company caved.
Lambda Legal represents Daniel Kline, who has worked for UPS for more than two decades, and his partner of 27 years, Frank Sories. In January, Sories was transferred from San Francisco to Chicago by his employer, United Airlines, when its office in San Francisco closed. Kline applied for a transfer to UPS’s Chicago branch under the company’s ‘Management Initiated Transfer Request” policy. Kline’s transfer was approved at district and regional levels, but was ultimately rejected by the corporation because the men are gay and therefore not legally married to each other.
UPS said now it will allow the transfer.
UPS is the world’s largest package delivery company, with 320,000 U.S. employees.