Companies strive to protect their LGBT workers while abroad

When Air France-KLM resumed regular flights to Iran last month after an eight-year hiatus, gay flight attendants urged CEO Frédéric Gagey to let them take a pass, given that homosexuality can get you executed in the Islamic Republic.

“It’s inconceivable to force someone to go to a country where his kind are condemned to death for who they are,” stated their online petition, signed by almost 30,000 people.

In the U.S., states and cities have been excoriated for restricting the ability of transgender people to use bathrooms appropriate to their sexual identity. Dueling lawsuits between North Carolina and the federal government, and a sharp rise in workplace bias claims, have put lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues center stage in a way that hasn’t been the case since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.

But a broader, global threat to equality persists, and not just for flight attendants. LGBT employees of multinational companies must often worry about legalized harassment, imprisonment or worse. While many nations marked the annual International Day Against Homophobia on Tuesday, about 75 countries still consider homosexuality a crime, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Ten of those states, including Qatar (site of the 2022 FIFA World Cup), the United Arab Emirates (home to financial hubs Dubai and Abu Dhabi) and Saudi Arabia, can impose the death penalty, the group said.

The brutal killing in Bangladesh last month of a gay activist employed by a U.S. aid agency and increased commerce with Iran following its nuclear deal framework have lent urgency to how companies interact with restrictive governments. Increasingly, it is chief executives instead of politicians who are faced with protecting the rights, and lives, of LGBT employees.

Deena Fidas, director of the workplace equality program at the Human Rights Campaign, said that while companies can establish “a bastion of equality” at the office with a code of conduct, what happens to workers, and particularly local hires, in countries that allow discrimination isn’t necessarily in their control.

“This is something that businesses are grappling with,” Fidas said.

The subject is sensitive: Few companies are willing to discuss their efforts in detail, perhaps to avoid offending host nations or imperiling business. Even Apple, whose chief executive is openly gay, declined to comment other than to note that the company led by Tim Cook has a robust anti-discrimination policy covering employees worldwide.

The World Bank estimates that in 2012, $31 billion was lost due to discrimination against LGBT individuals in school and employment. Lower labor force participation led to more poverty and poorer health outcomes, in turn causing higher health care and social program costs, not to mention less economic output. There are geopolitical costs as well: In 2014, the World Bank froze a $90 million health care loan to Uganda because of an anti-gay law passed there.

Some 64 percent of LGBT employees in 10 large countries, including the U.S., Brazil, India and China, said they hide their sexual identity in the workplace, according to research by the Center for Talent Innovation.

Most major American firms say they ensure that the protections employees enjoy in the U.S. extend to offices abroad, said Todd Sears, founder and principal of Out Leadership, a New York-based consulting firm.

The U.S. government does the same, offering diversity training to employees worldwide, said Regina Jun, president of GLIFAA, which represents LGBT workers at the State Department and other foreign-affairs agencies.

In certain countries where discrimination is codified, offering benefits to same-sex domestic partners may not be possible. Companies often seek to dissuade workers from going to locations where they won’t be safe.

The issue of protecting LGBT employees isn’t just for the private sector, as illustrated by the widely reported killing of Xulhaz Mannan, who worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka. Last year, the Obama administration named its first special envoy for the human rights of LGBT people, Randy Berry, and it has also named openly gay men as ambassadors to Vietnam and the Dominican Republic, both of whom moved to their postings with their husbands.

Government agencies have been showing flexibility in accommodating gay employees and their partners, Jun said.

Local employees in nations hostile to LGBT rights, however, are at much greater risk. They “face a whole different set of challenges because there’s no protection when they leave” work, Jun said.

That hit home on April 23 when Mannan was killed by machete-wielding assailants who barged into his home. The attackers targeted him for his role as editor of the country’s only gay rights magazine. (An al-Qaida affiliate claimed credit for the attack; a suspect was arrested Saturday.)

Despite the grim picture painted by the Human Rights Campaign’s map, however, some countries with LGBT restrictions choose not to enforce them. In Singapore, gay activists are allowed to gather and organize. An annual gay pride celebration called Pink Dot was sponsored last year by international firms.

Sears’ group, Out Leadership, provides companies with primers on how to operate in countries that criminalize homosexuality, including talking points for top executives to raise with local officials and ratings on how the law is applied in specific nations.

“The business community is the single largest driving force for LGBT equality globally,” said Sears.

He said that what most companies do to protect their LGBT employees in the most difficult locations is to simply not send them. And when they do go, employees tend to just avoid mentioning their sexual identity.

Maggie Stumpp, who is transgender, is one of those business travelers. When abroad, she avoids identifying herself as transgender.

“Because of cultural sensitivities,” Stumpp said.

This story was originally published May 17, 2016 at 10:03 PM with the headline "Companies strive to protect their LGBT workers while abroad."