As a native Virginian, let me join commonwealth leaders by rolling out the welcome mat. As you choose where to relocate your corporate offices, I know you face a tough decision. That's why you are weighing both Maryland and Washington, D.C., too.
All excellent possibilities, but don't forget that Virginia offers an unparalleled corporate climate. We boast some of the nation's top universities, a highly educated and dedicated work force, and consistent high marks for fiscal soundness despite the nation's economic downturn.
Whether Republicans or Democrats run Richmond, year after year our message is the same: We are open for business, and that includes Northrop Grumman.
Given our track record, Virginia is also likely to cut the best deal we know with tax incentives and benefits that will make some CFO hearts race. This formula worked beautifully in recent years, attracting global brands like Volkswagen, Hilton Hotels, and Rolls-Royce -- bringing capital investment and thousands of top jobs to our job-hungry state.
We need progressive high-tech employers like Northrop Grumman that walk the walk on diversity and inclusion, and that have earned 100 percent marks from the Human Rights Campaign for equal treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers. Northrop Grumman gets it. So do Volkswagen, Hilton, Rolls-Royce, and 32 out of 50 of Virginia's top employers with workplace nondiscrimination policies that include LGBT Virginians.
Those companies include SAIC, Dominion Virginia Power, Lockheed Martin, and Capital One -- all competing, like you, for the same pool of highly educated talent.
As a business leader, however, I also know you must read the fine print carefully and look before you leap. Let me deliver a few caveats, too, and suggest three key questions you may wish to ask Gov. Bob McDonnell before you move in. Your employees and shareholders will be very proud you did.
First, ask him why -- unlike past Virginia governors -- he did not and will not sign an executive order for state employment nondiscrimination that includes sexual orientation.
Second, ask why, as he insists it is a legislative hurdle, he has not yet urged our legislature to provide sexual orientation workplace protection as a matter of statute (rather than executive order). Why does he feel that Virginia's public workers should be less valued than Northrop Grumman's work force?
Third, ask why in the first two weeks of his new administration, his attorney general instructed our universities to drop "sexual orientation" from their employment nondiscrimination policies. If the McDonnell administration believes the universities have overreached Virginia statute, will our governor urge the legislature to remedy this gap and pass legislation to treat all Virginia employees equally, like 20 other states and the District of Columbia?
In its Feb. 6 editorial, "Prove It," the Richmond Times-Dispatch urges Virginia to measure up: "While he was attorney general, McDonnell said forbidding that kind of discrimination was fine in theory, but should be done through legislation rather than executive fiat. Now he has a chance to prove he meant it."
The Roanoke Times likewise labeled these failures "the easy bigotry of inaction." That is a seismic label in a state working hard to overcome the long-ago stain of Massive Resistance in decades past. Make no mistake, there are sizable distinctions between the historic divide of race and today's grappling with sexual orientation.
Yet there are shades of bigotry, and they speak clearly though more quietly today in the forms of discrimination that haunt the 5 percent to 10 percent of all Virginians who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Instead of Massive Resistance, Virginia's leaders quietly turn back the clock, put down the pen, and close the door. That is not the way Virginia corporations lead.
Outside the doors of our state Capitol, the business of Virginia moves forward with visionary companies like Northrop Grumman that compete aggressively for shareholder value, profits, customers, ideas, resources -- and above all, the best human talent. We know that discrimination exacts a price too high for any global competitor.
That's why leading companies take steps to ban discrimination and to provide equal benefits and equal respect for all.
Ironically, the nation appears poised soon to lift the ban on discriminating against openly gay service members, including many serving on Virginia's bases and installations -- with the full-throated approval of our nation's top national security leaders who recently testified in support. Northrop Grumman and other leading defense contractors will benefit by the knowledge that your own policies mirror America's fighting forces too.
One day soon, if you decide to become our neighbor and fellow Virginia citizen -- and I hope you will -- don't you agree that our commonwealth must catch up with Northrop Grumman?
Bob Witeck, a 1974 graduate of the University of Virginia, is CEO/co-founder of Witeck-Combs Communications, which specializes in consulting with corporations and nonprofits on LGBT households, marketing, and public relations. Contact him at bwiteck@witeckcombs.com.
