With a new contract signed, faculty at the 14 state-owned universities in the Pennsylvania… With a new contract signed, faculty at the 14 state-owned universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education have secured their positions for four years.

They could also secure domestic partner health benefits — which, if enacted, would mark another milestone in the ongoing dispute between Pitt and University employees seeking benefits for same-sex partners.

Although the agreement does not affect Pitt — a state-related university, but not a part of the State System of Higher Education — it is the second time the issue of health benefits for partners of gay employees has been included in contract negotiations of public universities in Pennsylvania.

State System of Higher Education employees still face hurdles before they will be eligible for the benefits. For the change to take effect at the state-owned schools, the 85,000 state employees insured by the Pennsylvania Employee Benefits Trust Fund would first have to become eligible for the new benefits. At that point, the union members of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculty would also become eligible.

Last year, Temple University became the first state-related Pennsylvania university to offer domestic partner benefits.

The attachment of the benefits structure of state-owned schools to the possible adoption of domestic partner benefits by the trust fund is unique to the State System of Higher Education’s new contract. State-related schools, such as Pitt and Temple, will not be affected by any changes to the trust fund.

Christy Leo, a spokeswoman for the trust fund, said that a change in the benefits structure of the state employees is currently “not on the table,” but that a change “could come from the governor, or could come from our board.”

State Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, whose district includes much of Pitt, said that the impetus for the new provision in the faculty union’s contract came largely from Gov. Ed Rendell.

“I think the governor is trying to move the state in a direction that is forward-thinking and not mired down in repressed, regressive thinking,” Frankel said.

Robert Hill, Pitt’s vice chancellor for public affairs, said the new contract would have little effect at Pitt.

“Pitt believes that each employer should decide for itself, based on the needs of employees and the marketplace conditions,” Hill said. “Those should be the determining factors of whether employers offer benefits or not.”

“Rather than have legislative bodies make that determination, each institution should be left alone to make its own judgment,” he added.

Pitt, in a report published in 2002 by its Special Committee on Domestic Partner Health Insurance Benefits, stated that it was reluctant to issue domestic partner benefits for fear of reprisal by the state legislature — a claim that the American Civil Liberties Union’s Vic Walczak finds unconvincing. Walczak, who is the legal director of the Greater Pittsburgh Chapter of the ACLU, is an attorney for seven current and former Pitt employees who have filed a lawsuit against the University.

“Chancellor Nordenberg has no clothes when it comes to this argument,” Walczak said. “Pitt isn’t giving benefits because it doesn’t want to give benefits.”

Conservative legislators are again cautioning universities not to offer health benefits for same-sex partners, but it is unclear what further actions or effects their admonitions might precede.

After Temple agreed to offer domestic partner benefits to many of its employees, state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Cranberry, said in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article that Pennsylvania’s state legislature had “sent a clear message that we don’t support that.”

But the state’s 2003-2004 budget funded Temple at a similar level to other state-related universities, including Pitt and Penn State. Hill nevertheless maintains that the danger of Pitt losing its state appropriation, if it were to change its benefits structure, has not disappeared.

“We remain concerned about what the Commonwealth thinks about these benefits,” Hill said, citing consultation with Pitt’s liaisons on the state level.

Proponents of domestic partner benefits suggest that a new benefits structure would make Pitt more competitive, despite potential new costs. Frankel believes this is the case, and he noted that a number of other universities, as well as Fortune 500 companies, have made benefits available for same-sex partners.

Pitt’s position in the market, according to Hill, is not fundamentally changed by new agreements with faculty at Temple and the possibility of future benefits for State System of Higher Education universities.

“I think, for the kind of faculty we recruit, you have to look at AAU conditions,” Hill said, referring to the American Association of Universities, an organization of 62 leading research universities in North America.

Neither Temple nor any State System of Higher Education universities are member institutions of AAU. According to a Human Rights Campaign survey, at least 43 of the 62 member institutions of AAU provide some kind of domestic partner health care benefits.

But Hill said that there are a “variety of factors that inform the decision of an employee to go to one institution or another,” and that Pitt does not compete with one single AAU member institution, but “all of the members.”

Hill maintains that there is no imperative for Pitt to offer benefits beyond what is already in place, despite the trend of colleges and universities to offer domestic partner benefits.

“There are faculty for whom the benefits are an issue, depending on the particular needs of an individual employee,” he said. “That employee or prospective employee should look at the totality of what this institution has to offer.”