RS Signs the Human Rights Campaign's "Count Us In" Pledge

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Jun 29, 2023, 08:00 ET

By signing, RS joins 75 large businesses and dozens of small businesses in publicly affirming allyship with the LGBTQ+ community.

FORT WORTH, Texas, June 29, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- RS, a trading brand of RS Group plc (LSE: RS1), a global provider of industrial product and service solutions, is proud to announce that it has signed the Human Rights Campaign's "Count Us In" pledge.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) civil rights advocacy organization, launched the new "Count Us In" pledge on June 26 in response to an unprecedented state of emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans. The pledge brings businesses together in allyship with the LGBTQ+ community and sends a powerful message to extremist lawmakers advancing anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that equality for all is not negotiable. Upon its launch, more than 75 large businesses and dozens of small businesses had already signed on.

Signatories of the "Count Us In" pledge commit to:

Being proud and public LGBTQ+ allies
Calling on lawmakers to abandon any efforts to discriminate and reject anti-LGBTQ threats to company values of diversity, equity, and inclusion
Promoting honest and authentic experiences of LGBTQ+ Americans, including those of employees and customers in the transgender and non-binary community
Ensuring that transgender and non-binary employees and their families have access to the health and medical care they need, where possible under the law

In 2023 alone, more than 520 bills that aim to strip LGBTQ+ Americans of their dignity, history, and very existence have been introduced in state legislatures, prompting the HRC to declare the first-ever national state of emergency for the LGBTQ+ community.

HRC president Kelley Robinson said that signatories of the "Count Us In" pledge recognize that "the work of allyship doesn't end on June 30" and that engaging with the LGBTQ+ community is critical to attracting and retaining quality employees, that inclusive marketing is critical to their future success, and that the current patchwork of laws restricting LGBTQ+ people's freedoms harms their businesses.

"We've seen it again and again," said Robinson. "Businesses that stick with their values send a powerful message to their employees, shareholders, and customers that equality is not up for debate. Every time businesses stand up and speak out for LGBTQ+ equality, they come out on top, regardless of baseless, anti-business attacks."

"As an employer, we're committed to ensuring that our organization is authentically and sustainably diverse and to seeking and embracing the very best talent," said Katie Cartwright, Vice President of People, RS in the Americas. "We believe that people are the center of our business and are vital to our continued success. When it comes to our company culture, we continuously strive to improve diversity, inclusivity, accessibility, and representation so that our employees are empowered to bring their true selves to work every day."

In 2022, RS received a score of 80 out of 100 on the HRC Foundation's 2022 Corporate Equality Index (CEI), the nation's foremost benchmarking survey and report measuring corporate policies and practices related to LGBTQ+ workplace equality. That same year, RS (which was then operating as Allied Electronics & Automation) extended its full suite of health and welfare benefits to employees' domestic partners, offered paid family leave for biological, adoptive, supporting, and foster parents, and added coverage of gender-affirming services for transgender individuals to its health insurance coverage.

To learn more about the HRC's "Count Us In" pledge, read the official HRC press release. For more information about RS, please visit https://us.rs-online.com/about-us/.

About RS in the Americas
In the Americas region, RS stocks more than 230,000 industrial and electronic products from more than 700 trusted suppliers. These solutions cover categories extending from automation and control equipment to interconnect, passive, active, and electromechanical components and include more than 80,000 high-quality, competitively priced RS PRO products. For more information, please visit https://us.rs-online.com or connect with us via social media on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

About RS Group
RS Group plc provides product and service solutions that help our customers design, build, maintain, repair, and operate industrial equipment and operations, safely and sustainably. We stock more than 750,000 industrial and electronic products, sourced from over 2,500 leading suppliers, and provide a wide range of product and service solutions to 1.1 million customers.

We support customers across the product lifecycle, whether via innovation and technical support at the design phase, improving time to market and productivity at the build phase, or reducing purchasing costs and optimizing inventory in the maintenance, repair, and operation phase. We offer our customers tailored product and service propositions that are essential for the successful operation of their businesses and help them save time and money.

RS Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange with stock ticker RS1 and in the year ended 31 March 2023 reported revenue of £2,982 million.

For more information, please visit https://www.rsgroup.com/ or connect with us on LinkedIn or Twitter.

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Editorial Contact & Media Inquiries:
Karen Gavenda
RS Director of Marketing
Americas
[email protected]

SOURCE RS