Health insurance benefits and various classes of employees

What is the name of your state? Alabama
I work for a company with only 8 full-time employees. I am the only woman who works full-time. When I interviewed for the job I asked if health insurance was offered. I was told that the co. would pay the single coverage and I would have to pay the difference between single and family in order to add my husband to the coverage (single coverage is about $275 / family coverage is about $700 per month). After joining the co I learned that I am the only employee who has to pay the difference. The others are managers who supervise subcontractors who produce the company's product -- I am the accountant. I was told that paying their family coverage was necessary to compete for the best managers in this industry. What are the legitimate reasons for defining different classes of employees and the differences in their benefits?

An employer's need to be competitive in the marketplace is a legitimate reason on which to define classes of employees. For example, it's not uncommon for an employer to offer Long Term Disability Insurance only to their exempt employees and not to the non-exempts. Offering LTD benefits is the norm for exempts and not the norm for non-exempts so this is a recruiting and retention issue.

Obviously if you are being treated differently because you are a woman, that is prohibited discrimination. But if your JOB is treated differently from the jobs of others who manage sub-contractors, that is legal.

FYI - an employer can define classes of employees in any legitimate way: exempt vs. non-exempt, office vs. shop, executive vs. everyone else, and so on. What they can't do is pick and choose among the classes they've defined as to what the offerings are. If an employer/their benefit plan defines the classses of employees as exempt and non-exempt, then ALL exempt employees must be provided the same benefits options.

Reply to question about health benefits

Alabama.--Thank you for your response to my question. I have also seen some other similar questions. The problem is that this is a small company and there are no written definitions of classes of employees -- mainly due to lack of knowledge in this area by the ownership/management. They want to consider each new hire individually and decide whether or not to offer insurance. A young man (he's single) was recently hired to do drafting -- full time. He's on salary, but the manager has not yet decided whether or not he wants to give him insurance coverage.