SEATTLE (AP) — A day after being sued by legally married,gay engineers, the nation’s largest
freight rail carriers announcedthey will provide health care benefits to the same-sex spouses of
theiremployees.Gus Melonas, a spokesman for BNSF Railway Co., read thestatement Wednesday from the National
Railway Labor Conference to TheAssociated Press. The conference represents the railroad companies indealings
with labor groups, lawmakers and courts.Same-sex spouseswill be eligible for dependent health care coverage
starting Jan. 1,the statement said. "While this it is not a benefit required by law orunder current
collective bargaining agreements, the railroads agreedwith labor to provide the benefit in light of recent
changes allowingsame sex couples to access same federal tax benefits provided to othermarried couples,"
the conference said.Two BNSF engineers inWashington state, one man and one woman, sued the company Tuesday
overits refusal to provide benefits to their spouses. The federal lawsuit,which alleges violations of the
federal Equal Pay Act, seeksclass-action status on behalf of any other BNSF employees who may havebeen
denied benefits for their same-sex spouses in a legally recognizedmarriage. It says the same-sex spouses
have been denied benefitsprovided routinely to those of opposite sex.A lawyer for thecouples, Cleveland
Stockmeyer, disagreed with the conference’s statementthat benefits for same-sex spouses aren’t required by
law or bycollective bargaining. The company’s health plan describes eligibledependents as "your husband
or wife," without excluding same-sexspouses, he argued.Stockmeyer said the railroads’ decision is agood
first step but would only partially resolve the lawsuit. Thecouples still need to be compensated for the
financial and emotionaldrain of spending months without the benefits as they fought BNSF tohave the spouses
added, he said."It shouldn’t take a federallawsuit to make a national company do the right thing,"
Stockmeyer said."If they tell me or my clients the benefits will be offered, and ifthey actually do it,
we’ll believe it. But they still need to accountfor denying them benefits for one year."The rail
conferencerepresents the largest freight carriers in the nation — including unitsof Norfolk Southern Corp.,
Union Pacific Corp., CSX Corp. and BerkshireHathaway Inc.’s BNSF — as well as some smaller railroads. Its
statement,reported earlier Wednesday by the Omaha World Herald’s Omaha.com, saidemployees would receive more
information about the same-sex spousehealth benefits in the coming weeks.The industry spends more than $2
billion a year on health care benefits for rail employees, the statement said.___Follow Gene Johnson at
https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle .Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rightsreserved. This material
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