Domestic partners lawsuit has wider work implications

A lawsuit filed in Phoenix this week which seeks to affirm the right of homosexual state and university workers to receive benefits for their domestic partners is also a challenge to a basic concept of workplace compensation, one which has major workplace implications.

The lawsuit is attempting to reverse an action by the Arizona Legislature earlier this year which will limit benefits such as health care coverage and insurance to married workers and their families. This took away benefits that former Gov. Janet Napolitano had authorized for workers' domestic partners - whether unmarried heterosexual partners or homosexual partners.

Supporters of the lawsuit are portraying the worker benefits denial as a violation of the Constitution's requirement of equal protection under the law. The problem is they are claiming that equal protection violation is a pay issue - in other words, they are equating the extra benefits that are provided to workers as pay.

By defining benefits as pay, they are saying homosexual workers are being paid less for the same work than their heterosexual married co-workers because they do not get the same level of benefits for their gay domestic partners.

This gets into an area that has implications not just for state and university workers, but ultimately for private employees, too. If the lawsuit is successful in getting benefits defined as pay, it would alter the long-standing definition of these benefits as not being part of a worker's pay. They are "extras," ones that can be given or taken away or limited, depending on the desire of the employer.

Worker benefits, which used to be more commonly called "fringe" benefits, emerged in World War II as a way to get around pay restrictions imposed during the war. It was a way to attract desirable workers or to reward key workers with a nonpay form of compensation. By separating it from pay, it allowed more latitude in what was offered and to whom, as well as providing tax benefits in some cases.

The idea of these extra benefits outside of pay became so popular that they are now offered almost routinely.

While some may see the lawsuit as simply a matter of fairness, by trying to define benefits as pay it threatens to shake the basis of worker benefits for everyone and perhaps disrupt them in the future.

The distinction between pay and extra benefits needs to remain.