Part-time broadcast and cable employment is ‘fundamental to any m...

Part-time broadcast and cable employment is “fundamental to any meaningful effort to provide equal employment opportunity,” Minority Media & Telecom Council (MMTC) said in filing at FCC. Part-time employment is primary entry route for minorities and women, group said, and since “marginal cost of including part-time employees in recruitment and recordkeeping programs is minimal, there’s no reason to allow broadcasters to afford less than 100% equal opportunity to part-time workers. MMTC’s filing was in response to FCC rulemaking seeking comments on numbers and types of positions that were part-time, whether compliance with recruitment, recordkeeping and reporting requirements for such positions would be excessively time-consuming and therefore whether those requirements should apply to part- time jobs, whether Commission should set minimum number of hours for rules to apply. MMTC said FCC lacked authority to deny part-time workers full protection under EEO regulations. “There is neither a moral justification nor a practical reason to exclude any class of jobs, or any class of employees, from the most robust protections of our civil rights laws, rules and policies,” MMTC said. Its filing was on behalf of more than 40 organizations, including ACLU, NAACP, National Council of La Raza.