94% of Fortune 500 Company's Provide Protection for LGBT Employees

The list of Fortune 500 companies providing written workplace protections on the basis of sexual orientation has grown to 471 Equality Forum, an LGBT civil rights organization, said Wednesday.
The figure represents 94.2 percent of the companies listed in 2008.
This year marks the fifth anniversary of Equality Forum’s Fortune 500 project, which is a collaboration with Louis Thomas of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Ian Ayres of Yale Law School.
“The Fortune 500 have overwhelmingly decided that including sexual orientation is in the best corporate interest and helps communicate corporate values to the estimated $660 billion annual domestic GLBT consumer market,” said Malcolm Lazin, Executive Director, Equality Forum.
In 2003, when Equality Forum began contacting the Fortune 500 companies, 323 companies explicitly provided sexual orientation protection in their workplace policies.
Equality Forum reached out to the CEOs, Human Resource Directors and all members of the Boards of Directors of the 177 companies without this protection.