Company Earns Perfect Rating In HRC's Corporate Equality Index For Fifth Straight Year

Once again, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has given The Coca-Cola Company a 100 percent rating for our workplace policies for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) associates.
The HRC is the nation's largest GLBT civil rights organization. Now in its ninth year, its Corporate Equality Index measures the extent to which employers promote workplace fairness for GLBT employees. TCCC has received a perfect rating every year since 2006.

"The Coca-Cola Company is proud to have again participated in the Human Rights Campaign's annual Corporate Equality Index and our longstanding achievement of a 100 percent score," said Steve Bucherati, Group Director, Global Diversity and Workplace Fairness. "We count on the CEI to assist us in moving our diversity journey forward, and truly value our partnership with HRC."

Joe Solmonese, HRC President, had this to say in remarks published in our 2009 Sustainability Report, "The Coca-Cola Company is a model employer for diversity and inclusion within its own workforce and as a member of the larger business community. Its leadership on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality in the workplace is not only reflected in its longstanding achievement of 100 percent on the Corporate Equality Index, but in its principled support of anti-discrimination legislation that would protect every worker in the United States from being judged on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity."

A record 844 companies are rated in this year's index, including the entire Fortune 500. The number of businesses with perfect ratings rose by 11 percent in the past year, to 338. Highlights from this year's report include:

99 percent of CEI-rated companies include sexual orientation and 76 percent, including The Coca-Cola Company, include sexual orientation and gender identity in their non-discrimination policies. In 2002, only 5 percent of CEI-rated companies included gender identity among their non-discrimination policies.

In 2004, only 3 percent of CEI-rated companies addressed transgender health with limited benefit offerings. Today, 79 percent of CEI-rated companies provide this limited coverage and 85 companies, including The Coca-Cola Company, offer at least one healthcare plan option to all employees that covers many medically necessary transition-related treatment including hormone therapies and sexual affirmation surgeries.

In 2002, 70 percent of CEI-rated companies provided domestic partnership healthcare benefits. Today, 95 percent of CEI-rated companies, including The Coca-Cola Company, provide that coverage.

The Corporate Equality Index assesses more than 30 policies and practices covering nearly every aspect of employment for LGBT worker -- from non-discrimination protections and the training surrounding those policies to domestic partnership and legal dependent benefits to gender transition guidelines and LGBT employee resource groups. Ratings are based on publicly available information and data submitted from unofficial employee groups or individual employees.