Multinationals Seeking Top Expat Talent Battle Anti-LGBT Laws

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- For Alexander Dmitrenko, 42, it was a purchase to cement the ties to his adopted home. He’s spent most of his career crossing borders: An ethnic Ukrainian born in Russia, Dmitrenko has graduate degrees from universities in Budapest, New York, and Toronto, and he’s an attorney for Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, a law firm with headquarters in London. For the past four years, he’s specialized in corruption investigations from the firm’s Tokyo office. “I love Japan with all my heart,” he says, which is one reason he bought a vacation home on a remote island about an hour by plane from Tokyo.

Yet there was a problem. To purchase home insurance, he needed a next of kin living in Japan. Dmitrenko is gay and has a partner, but as far as the insurer is concerned, he has no local relative, because the government doesn’t recognize same-sex unions. “So I have no insurance,” he says. In a country that is earthquake-prone, that’s bad enough, but Dmitrenko says it’s just one instance of the daily doses of discrimination he and his partner face. “There are whole areas of rights where we are invisible in the law,” he says. “It hurts.”

Discrimination of the kind Dmitrenko faces is increasingly a problem for multinational businesses operating in countries with vastly different policies toward LGBT people. Although more than two dozen countries have legalized same-sex marriage, some 70 nations have anti-LGBT laws, and many more have discriminatory policies. That’s pressuring global companies, which depend on being able to move talented employees around the world, to find ways to help workers and their families in countries that lack protections for LGBT people.

The problem is particularly complicated in Japan, which is a laggard compared with most other developed economies. Within the Asia-Pacific region, Taiwan in May recognized same-sex marriage, following earlier moves by Australia and New Zealand. Hong Kong’s top court on June 6 took a big step in that direction, ruling same-sex couples married elsewhere were entitled to benefits straight couples receive. Lower courts are now hearing cases challenging the city’s same-sex marriage ban. And in Singapore, a campaign to decriminalize gay sex has won support from members of the city-state’s political and business elite.

The second-class status for LGBT people in Japan is a growing concern for politicians and businesses. Although Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s cabinet hasn’t promoted LGBT equality, 11 municipalities certify same-sex partnerships for couples, according to Nijiiro Diversity, an organization advocating for LGBT people in Japan. Tokyo last year passed an anti-discrimination law covering sexual orientation and gender identity, and Japan’s major opposition parties on June 3 submitted a bill calling for marriage equality.

Businesses are helping to fuel the equality push. The American Chamber of Commerce in Japan joined groups representing businesses from Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the U.K. to call for an end to the same-sex marriage ban. Liberalization would benefit all com­panies doing business in Japan, they said in a statement released in September, arguing that countries with marriage equality “have a competitive advantage over Japan because they offer LGBT talent a more inclusive environment.”

Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley, and Barclays have endorsed the call for marriage equality in the country, as have Amazon.com, Coca-Cola, and General Electric. Nissan Motor, Sony, and Nippon Life Insurance were among more than 100 com­panies to receive a gold ranking in an annual survey of policies for LGBT employees by Work With Pride, a local advocacy group.

Some companies go to great lengths to help. Moriaki Kida, an executive for EY Japan in Tokyo who’s set to become chief operating officer on July 1, married his husband in New York in 2014. Two years later, EY transferred Kida back to Japan. His British husband, unable to get a spousal visa, relied on student and short-term permits and frequent trips outside Japan to avoid overstaying. EY compensated the couple for the extra costs and eventually came up with another solution: The company hired Kida’s husband, enabling both of them to live in the country. Not everyone can get that kind of help, of course. “I feel fortunate, but I feel a little guilty,” Kida says.

Even a company as big as Panasonic Corp. has challenges. It’s had an anti-discrimination policy since 2016 and offers gay couples the same spousal benefits as straight ones. Last year it chose a gay man, Laurence Bates, as general counsel and a member of its board. Bates, 61, and his husband have two children adopted in the U.S. Japan recognizes only his husband as the parent, so Bates can’t sponsor visas for his family. Unlike many foreigners following a same-sex spouse who rely on short-term tourist visas, Bates’s husband was able to get a student visa and later qualified for a work visa after starting a small trading company. “It’s been a stressful situation,” Bates says. “If push came to shove and we needed help, there might be something the company would be able to do, but it’s always an open question.”

Younger people accustomed to equal rights are less willing to accept such uncertainty. A colleague of Dmitrenko’s at Freshfields, Australian Rachel McCafferty, 25, left Japan in February after a temporary assignment. She’d wanted a longer-term job there but reconsidered. “To live in a society where you don’t enjoy the same equal rights makes me feel you’re not entitled to the same happiness as everyone else,” she says. “I’d love to move back, but I feel it would be taking a step backwards.” She now works in London, where she lives with her girlfriend.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jodi Schneider at jschneider50@bloomberg.net, James EllisHoward Chua-Eoan

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