WORKPLACE DIVERSITY : Gays Confront ‘Lavender Ceiling’

Sass Nielson will never forget the day her boss at Walt Disney Co. expressed curiosity about a short story she had written.

The request made her cringe, and not because Nielson, a senior trainer at the Burbank-based entertainment company, feared that her supervisor would criticize her writing. The short story--an autobiographical account of meeting a famous female comic--revealed something much more personal than her prose.

It revealed that Nielson, 46, was a lesbian.

“It’s never easy,” Nielson says today, recalling that pivotal moment. “I gave it to her knowing that this was a coming out process. But she couldn’t have been more supportive.”

Each day, thousands of employees throughout corporate California wrestle with whether to come out of the closet. Some fear that revealing their sexual orientation will bring down the “lavender ceiling,” which they say can spell the difference between a promotion and stagnation.

Others speak of the relief at not having to hide their sexuality in an office environment where desktop photos of spouses or lovers are commonplace.

Then there are those who come out discreetly to sympathetic bosses and colleagues, but not always to clients or in the corporate boardroom.

“It never leaves my mind for a day that it could be a problem,” says Elizabeth Birch, 36, a senior executive in charge of litigation worldwide for Apple Computer Inc. in Cupertino.

As co-chair of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, Birch says she must go back and forth between two worlds.

“There are still major outside law firms I hire each day who only learn about my sexuality over time,” she says. “You don’t want to come into some major settlement conference and announce “Hi, I’m Elizabeth Birch and I’m a lesbian. I’m very calculating about when it’s even proper or appropriate to allude to it.”

Birch concedes that hers is an enviable situation. Apple Chairman John Sculley wholeheartedly supports gay and lesbian rights, and joined the celebrated March on Washington last month--not exactly a typical activity among Fortune 500 chieftains.

Neilson, who says she was kicked out of the armed forces in 1966 for being a lesbian, has found her niche years later. Roberta Taylor, the supervisor who read Nielson’s short story, says her employee’s sexual orientation was a “non-issue” at the office.

“As a manager, there was no impact in my department,” recalls Taylor, who now works for a computer company in Washington state. “People always talk but nothing arose in terms of any problems. We had a fairly small group and everyone was very close.”

California is one of eight states that have passed legislation prohibiting discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation. According to Alan Friel, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who works with gay and lesbian rights, an employee who feels discriminated against has two options: File a complaint with the labor commissioner or hire an attorney.

Having a law on the books is one thing, but proving sexual discrimination is a more difficult endeavor.

Consider Scott, an accountant with a Big Six firm in California who doesn’t feel comfortable using his last name. For 10 years, Scott, who was closeted, was promoted at the conservative firm. Last year, he made partner.

Scott then joined the board of a philanthropic group affiliated with gay and lesbian rights. When his supervisors learned of his involvement, Scott says, his job evaluations suddenly plummeted. Eventually, he was asked to leave the firm.

While Scott can’t prove it, he believes that the action was sparked by the disclosure, however oblique, that he is gay. “Oh, they’ll say I wasn’t performing. They’ll say a lot of things. But for years before I got excellent evaluations,” he says.

Scott, who is now negotiating with a new employer, adds that he knows several other accountants at his former firm who are gay--but not out. Knowing of Scott’s experience, it’s unlikely any of them would find much encouragement to come out of the closet.

Advocacy groups and gays themselves say that is too bad because employees who come out at work are likely to be happier, more focused and productive than those who must waste energy concealing their sexuality.

Sean Strub and Daniel B. Baker, co-authors of a book titled “Cracking the Corporate Closet,” to be published next year, have studied gays in the workplace extensively.

Strub believes that those who are open about their homosexuality make better employees. The lavender ceiling “affects people who are closeted more than people who are out,” Strub says. “Someone who’s in the closet exudes shame. Their co-workers and superiors pick up on that shame.”

The authors are doing a wide-ranging study of Fortune 500 companies, sending out questionnaires asking them to list their highest-ranking gay or lesbian employee, whether they advertise in gay-oriented publications, offer benefits to domestic partners, and have gay, lesbian and bisexual employee groups.

One finding is that manufacturing companies, such as the auto industry, tend to be more conservative and less open to change. In such places, coming out can still mean the kiss of death for a career, Strub says.

By contrast, the computer industry, emerging technologies and many firms in Silicon Valley provide nurturing environments for alternate lifestyles and careers.

“Apple wants the very best employees, and sometimes that’s a gay or lesbian person,” Birch says. “We would never artificially reduce our employee pool.”

Strub also notes the growing trend for gay and lesbian employees to form workplace organizations where they can network, offer mutual support and push for anti-discrimination policies. Such groups can be great equalizers, a place where the mail room clerk and the executive vice president share a common identity apart from the hierarchical corporate structure.

The Disney Co., Great Western Bank, Kaiser Permanente, the Los Angeles Times, United Airlines, Xerox Corp. and U S West Inc. are some of the firms that now have gay and lesbian employee groups.

But corporations must also wrestle with the bottom line of changing employee benefit policies: costs. J. Craig Fong, director of the western office of Lambda Legal Defense, frequently fields calls from human relations officials wanting to know how much it will cost to implement policies that offer benefits for domestic partners.

The answer, Fong says, is little or nothing more than it would for insuring employee spouses. For one, many partners of gay workers are often covered under their own employers’ insurance policies, he says. Second, firms often save money on insuring gay couples, since they usually don’t have children.

He cites a 1991 study done by the city of Seattle after it began offering benefits to domestic partners. Only 2.3% of the 10,000 municipal employees applied for health benefit coverage for their domestic partners, the study found.

For many gay employees, revealing that they are HIV positive or have AIDS is a second, more painful coming out. Being openly gay at work was never an issue for F.C. Slaght, 29, a human resources assistant with Pacific Gas & Electric in San Francisco. The real test came when he broke the news about his condition.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” Slaght recalls telling Erin Andre, one of his two supervisors. “There are going to be times I’m going to need some time off to go to the doctor because I’m HIV positive.”

For a moment, the air crackled with tension. Then, to Slaght’s relief, Andre pledged support. The two have since carved out an unusual understanding on this difficult topic.

Slaght and a second employee who is also HIV positive take turns covering each other’s work when one schedules a medical appointment. Colleagues, who appear well aware of how AIDS is transmitted, haven’t expressed fear of working with Slaght, Andre says.

Meanwhile, “even though they don’t have to, they keep us posted on what their (T-cell) count is, on their medical status, so we don’t feel like their time is right around the corner,” Andre says.

“But when it is,” she adds, “we’ll start looking at job share options, at long term disability, at what will make the most sense. They’re both great workers, and like with any employee, we don’t know what the future will hold.”

When a Worker Comes Out There are three ways of coming out: (1) involuntarily, being outed (2) voluntarily but under duress (AIDS diagnosis, harassment at the workplace, etc.) and (3) voluntarily, the best of all possible worlds. Here are tips for managers: * Show support. Say, “I don’t discriminate and I won’t permit harassment or prejudiced behavior in my department.” Hopefully the company already has such a policy. Add that the employee can talk to you if any harassment occurs. * Live up to what you said. If there is a harassment situation, such as jokes or nasty graffiti, intervene and make a statement. Say: “We don’t tolerate that kind of behavior here.” People can believe what they want to believe, but they shouldn’t act out that behavior if it damages another employee. * Let the employee chart the course. Coming out is a critical and vulnerable point in a person’s development, and everyone does it differently. Don’t pry. Don’t lecture. Be businesslike. Just offer a safe space. * Put yourself in the other person’s position. Think about how you’d feel dealing with nasty jokes, stereotyping or having your family left out of family events. How would you want to change company policies if you were in that person’s shoes? Source: Ed Mickens, editor and publisher of “Working It Out,” a New York-based quarterly newsletter of gay and lesbian employment issues that is geared to management.