Walmart Stores Inc. (Bentonville, Ark.) has agreed to allow workers’ same-sex partners to participate in its company health benefits plan.
According to Bloomberg News, full-time employees’ spouses and domestic partners will be eligible for coverage in medical, dental, vision, life, critical illness and accident plans.
The world’s largest retailer, a frequent target of labor rights groups, sent a postcard to all of its employees this week, outlining the new policy. It provided a copy of the postcard to Bloomberg.
A company spokesman said the retailer’s definition of domestic partners includes all spouses or unmarried partners, of same or opposite sex, who’ve lived together for at least 12 months, aren’t married to anyone else and plan to continue sharing a household indefinitely.
The company said it made the change to have a consistent policy across the country as some states alter their definitions of marriage.
Currently, reports Bloomberg, 62 percent of the Fortune 500 companies offer health-care benefits to same-sex partners – roughly twice that of a decade ago.