At yesterday’s Campus Unite! rally, GEO announced our Benefits for All plan and officially kicked off our campaign to protect SSDP benefits at the University of Michigan. Below is the text of Julie Robert’s speech at the rally announcing our plan.
My name is Julie Robert and I’m a member of the Graduate Employee’s Organization. I’m here to talk to you today about the Benefits For All plan, our answer to the problem created when the Michigan Court of Appeals made it unconstitutional to provide Domestic Partner benefits which mirror spousal benefits.
The court ruling targets people who receive Same-Sex Domestic Partner benefits. But, this ruling impacts all the members of the University community. We will not be able to attract and retain the best faculty and graduate students if we cannot guarantee SSDP benefits.
As part of CampusUnite, we know that there are some issues where the University knows what it should do, but chooses not to. On other issues, they know what the right thing to do is, and they work to make it happen. The SSDP question is one of the cases where we believe that the University is trying to do the right thing. What GEO wants, what we all want, is a plan that will allow all domestic partners to receive benefits.
We believe that we have a workable solution. We call it Benefits for All; a plan that protects the right to health care by providing the University with a way to maintain its commitments to its employees. The Benefits of All plan replaces benefits structures based on marriage with a system of Designated Beneficiaries. Under our plan, each person will be allowed to cover the person most important to him or her—this is their Designated Beneficiary. Eliminating marriage from the equation allows us to work within the law.
We are working with others in the university community to call for the implementation of this plan. We are counting on you, our allies, to help us with the Benefits For All visibility campaign by wearing a button and talking to people about the issue.
GEO’s goal has been, and continues to be, to obtain equal rights to benefits for all. During this time of damaging legal precedents, discrimination and economic uncertainty, it is important for us to join together to protect existing benefits. As a community, we have the collective power to protect benefits for all.
Comments are closed