Taking a unique tactic, New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine recently weighed in on the controversy surrounding the denial of benefits to same-sex civil-unioned couples by sending a letter July 20 to United Parcel Service.

In the letter, Corzine requested that the shipping company honor New Jersey’s civil-unions law and grant gay employees in same-sex relationships the same benefits as married workers.

Gay-rights advocates claim that UPS (and many other New Jersey employers) is not treating gay employees and their partners who have entered a civil union the same as married employees and their spouses, despite a state law requiring employers to do so.

Last week, two New Jersey-based UPS drivers began legal action against their employer after the company denied health benefits to their civil-union partners.

In response, UPS said it could not grant the benefits because of language contained in the drivers’ union contract, which allows benefits for “spouses.”

On Tuesday, a UPS spokesperson said the company had not seen the governor’s letter.

“We have not received any letter,” said Norman Black, UPS director of Global Media Services. “We have been told by reporters that the governor released this to the press on [July 20] and then allegedly put it in the U.S. Postal Service to come to us. My chairman and CEO has not seen any letter from the governor of New Jersey.”

PGN obtained a copy of the letter, in which Corzine stated that the New Jersey civil-union statute “makes plain that New Jersey law intends that civil-union partners be viewed as spouses under all facets of New Jersey law and that a reference to ‘spouse’ in a legal context, including in a contract, embraces civil-union partners.”

Corzine then urged the company to grant the couples in question their partner benefits.

“Surely, as a company with a long-standing commitment to its employees and the community, UPS would not want to make its employees and their families face these difficult choices based on the subtleties of the interaction of federal and state law,” he said.

“I’ve seen what’s allegedly in the letter,” Black said. “The bottom line here has not changed in terms of offering domestic-partner benefits to all of our employees. All of our employees in the United States, except for those represented by the Teamsters, have domestic-partner benefits. We would not have any reason to avoid offering benefits to this couple in New Jersey or to any of our other unionized employees. And nobody is more disappointed about the current situation in New Jersey than UPS is.”

Black explained that UPS cannot change the policies regarding their union employees as long as the current contract in still valid.

“The last Teamster contract we negotiated was in 2002,” he said. “The company made its decision to offer domestic-partner benefits to the entire workforce in 2004. We cannot unilaterally improve or reduce healthcare benefits for union employees except at the negotiating table through collective bargaining. We have opened those negotiations now to replace the contract that expires next year, Aug. 1, 2008.”

Union representatives disagree, saying there is nothing stopping UPS from granting benefits.

“Nothing prohibits it,” said Victor Palumbo, secretary treasurer of the Teamsters Local 177 in New Jersey. “They can unilaterally improve the benefit package to our members. There’s nothing prohibiting that. If they want to include domestic partners, they can include it. They can upgrade the health plan to include that benefit for our members.”

Lambda Legal, a gay-advocacy organization, agrees that UPS can decide to grant domestic-partner benefits to its union employees and is currently acting on behalf of the two gay New Jersey couples who were denied benefits for their partners by the company.

“We’re currently in the administrative process with UPS,” said David S. Buckel, senior counsel and Marriage Project director for Lambda Legal. “That’s something that we have to go through prior to filing any action in court. We haven’t filed a civil action in a court of law.”

Buckel said he hopes Corzine’s letter to UPS will help them resolve the issue without litigation.

“We’d hope that, having confirmed the law, that Gov. Corzine will lead the UPS to do the right thing,” he said. “Corzine said it in his letter. If you read the civil-union law, it says civil-union partners are spouses. UPS’ contract says spouses will be defined under state law. So you put those two things together and UPS has got what it needs. So they have to explain why Corzine’s letter isn’t the end of it. It’s up to UPS and if they choose to do the right thing.”

Black disagreed, maintaining that UPS is not free to interpret the law as broadly as Corzine describes.

“I am told that the governor’s assertion is that UPS has the discretion to do this or that, there’s no reason why we can’t just interpret things in such a way that we do this, suggesting again that we would have some reason not to if we could,” Black said. “Our lawyers continue to disagree with the governor’s assertion. There is a clear body of case law and federal regulation that says you cannot unilaterally change healthcare benefits in the middle of a contract without collective bargaining that includes improving benefits.”

Black also said that, because of the way the law is written, UPS cannot interpret civil unions as equal to marriage.

“Our lawyers say that, even in the New Jersey statute itself, it represents three legally distinctive forms of a committed relationship: marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships,” he said. “Nowhere in the language of the statute does it equate those three committed forms of relationship as being equal. I understand that a lot of people in the state of New Jersey were told that a civil union is exactly the same thing as a legal marriage. But that is not what the statute says. Our lawyers simply do not believe that, based on what was passed and signed, we have the room to interpret the statute and falling into this verbiage of legally married spouse. If the letter is real, we must respectfully disagree with the governor’s legal advice.”

The one thing that most of the parties involved can agree upon is that if New Jersey defined domestic partnerships as equal to marriage, “it would [fix the problem] in that one state,” Black said. “Just as is the case today in Massachusetts.
“They’ve said if legislature provides marriage like they did in Massachusetts, then [they would] give them the benefits,” Buckel said. “So the bigger solution, that goes beyond two UPS drivers to hundreds of other employees in other companies in the state of New Jersey, is for the legislature to fix the problem they created in the first place.