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| Photo American Airlines |
The US mega-carrier American Airlines has signed an open letter, along with other major companies including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, HP, IBM, PayPal and Pepsi sent to Texas state lawmakers opposing any discriminatory legislation.
'Laws that allow discrimination go against American’s fundamental beliefs of equality and inclusion — values that are crucial for the success of the company.'
American has joined dozens of other companies and business organisations to express why discriminatory legislation is bad for business and will negatively impact the airlines' ability to recruit and retain team members.
Visit the Texas Competes website to read the full letter.
The letter pledges that the signatories will, 'continue to oppose any unnecessary, discriminatory, and divisive measures that would damage Texas’ reputation and create problems for our employees and their families. These include policies that explicitly or implicitly allow for the exclusion of LGBTQ people, or anyone else, as well as the preemption of municipal nondiscrimination laws, in whole or in part. Such measures are inconsistent with an innovative, forward-facing Texas that we can all be proud of.'
Texas doesn't have any state laws that prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and recently the Texas state Senate passed Senate Bill 17 which would protect the right of state-licensed workers such as doctors, teachers and counsellors to refuse to provide their services based on “a sincerely held religious belief”, except in cases where medical services are necessary to “prevent death or imminent serious bodily injury”.
Two other Senate Bills, 2485 and 2487 were passed last Thursday which effectively override local laws that mandated equal paid sick leave and standardised employment practices have been seen as detrimental to the LGBT+ community and equal rights.
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