RALEIGH, N.C. – A proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in North Carolina will hurt the state’s business recruitment efforts during a critical time in our state’s economic history, Democratic legislators said Tuesday.
House Minority Leader Joe Hackney was among the Democratic legislators at the press conference in the Legislative Building in Raleigh.
“This distracting and discriminatory amendment harms our state economy by sending a message that our state doesn’t welcome the diverse workforce that modern employers need to compete in a global economy,” Rep. Hackney said. “This perception alone can harm business recruitment efforts during a time when efforts could be better spent creating jobs rather than limiting options.”
They were joined by business leaders from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants in Durham and Replacements Ltd. in Guilford County. Between them, the two companies employ more than 1,000 people.
“The proposed amendment is bad for business,” said Anthony Pugliese, senior vice president for finance, membership & operations for AICPA and a member of the board of directors for the North Carolina Chamber. “It interferes with our ability to recruit talent and our right to provide competitive benefits to our employees. It also signals to major employers like ours that our state is not welcoming to the diverse, creative workforce that we need to compete in the global economy. It’s also bad for future business development in the state as we seek top grow our tax base. It is very unlikely we would have ever relocated our global headquarters to the Triangle and hired 450 local employees in 2006 if this amendment had been the law.”
AICPA is in the district of Minority Whip Larry Hall.
“With the unemployment rate in Durham County at 8.2 percent, we need to increase job opportunities and be a welcoming community for people of diverse backgrounds,” Rep. Hall said. “Instead, discriminatory efforts like this makes companies question whether North Carolina is a place they want to do business.”
Private business is already a leader in the recognition of same-sex couples in North Carolina. Eighty-nine percent (89%) of Fortune 500 companies prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, including Bank of America, Lowe’s, Duke Energy, BB&T, and Reynolds American, the five-largest North Carolina-based public companies. More than 50 major private companies in North Carolina offer same sex domestic partner benefits, including Bank of America, the fifth-largest Fortune 500 company in the United States, and Food Lion.
“It makes no sense that North Carolina, in a dark economic hour, should single out a minority of its population for public judgment,” said Andrew Spainhour, general counsel for Replacements Ltd. “To those who say this won't hurt business, we say, put yourselves in the shoes of someone trying to entice an LGBT professional, or business leader, or educator, or some other member of the creative class, to come to North Carolina, a state considering an anti-gay amendment in the year 2012. We're incredulous that we can't all agree that's a tough sell.”
A special session of the General Assembly, the third session this year, will convene Sept. 12 to discuss proposed constitutional amendments. The additional cost to the state for this session is an estimated $50,000 a day. The state spent $200,000 for the most recent special session of the General Assembly.
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