Same-Sex Partners of Pennsylvania-System Profs to Get Benefits

Pennsylvania’s 14 state-owned universities will extend health benefits to faculty members’ domestic partners, according to a tentative agreement reached last week by the state-university system and its faculty union, an article in The Chronicle reports. Reporter Brock Read writes:

The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education and the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties avoided a strike by agreeing on the contract last Monday, less than two days after the professors’ previous contract had lapsed (The Chronicle, July 3). The agreement promised one-time cash payments and incremental pay raises to all 5,500 of the universities’ professors.

Among other provisions, it also pledged to extend health benefits to same-sex partners of faculty members if the couples are deemed “financially interdependent,” said Patricia I. Heilman, president of the faculty union. In order to receive the new benefits, couples must sign affidavits stating, among other things, that the partners jointly own a home or share bank accounts, and that neither one has been in another relationship during the previous six months.

The agreement still has to be approved by the union and the system’s governing board before it can go into effect.