Wal-Mart to Include Same-Sex Partners in Company Benefits

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville said Tuesday it will allow workers’ same-sex partners to participate in its company health benefits.

Full-time associates’ spouses and domestic partners will be eligible for coverage in the company’s medical, dental, vision, life, critical illness or accident plans.

Walmart, which has frequently been targeted by labor-rights groups pushing for better pay and benefits, said it made the change so it could have a consistent policy for all 50 states as some of them alter their definitions of marriage, domestic partnerships and civil unions.

“We thought it was important to develop a single definition for all Walmart associates in the U.S. to give them consistency in the various markets we operate in across the country,” Randy Hargrove, a Walmart spokesman, said in telephone interview with Bloomberg News.

The retailer’s definition of domestic partners includes same- or opposite-sex spouses, unmarried partners who live together for at least 12 months, are not married to anyone else and plan to continue sharing a household indefinitely, Hargrove said.

Wal-Mart has 1.3 million full- and part-time U.S. employees, Hargrove said. More than half participate in health care plans. A total of 1.1 million employees and family members are covered by the plans, he said.