NOW Foundation Presents Comments to FCC at May 27 Hearing
May 30, 2003
The National Organization for Women Foundation has worked with the Federal Communications Commission for many years on a range of issues, including the commission's Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) rules as well as regulations aimed at preventing over-concentration of media ownership. Most recently, at a May 27 panel organized by Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael J. Copps, the NOW Foundation presented comments on the ownership rules due for a vote on June 2.
Over the past two years, the NOW Foundation's work with the commission has focused on its EEO rules. Our efforts to expand the EEO rules for women and minorities were dealt a serious blow in 1998 when the D.C. Circuit Court struck down the commission's EEO rules regarding recruitment outreach as unconstitutional.
In response, NOW worked with the FCC to craft new EEO regulations, only to see them also struck down on appeal in 2000. NOW filed briefs in support of the FCC in the D.C. Court of Appeals, and when the state broadcasters prevailed in that forum, we filed for certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case and again the FCC was without EEO rules for the broadcast industry.
Since that time we have worked with the FCC to craft new constitutional regulations for employment outreach. We have met with all the sitting commissioners in the Clinton administration and the Bush administration and presented testimony in a public hearing regarding the need for outreach in employment recruitment to women and minorities in the broadcast industry. We have filed comments and reply comments to rule-making proposals.
On November 20, 2002, the FCC released the text of its new EEO rules, which incorporate many of the proposals for which we have advocated. Since we knew the law would not allow an ideal EEO rule to be upheld, we believe our adopted proposals will constitute positive change for women and minorities seeking employment in the broadcast industry. The new FCC EEO rules require that broadcasters
- disseminate information on full-time job vacancies
- notify requesting organizations of full-time vacancies and
- complete a number of community outreach activities
Among our proposals that were adopted is the new requirement that broadcast stations with websites must post their EEO file so the public can monitor the station's outreach efforts. We also proposed that broadcasters be required to collect information on the referral source of each job applicant, interviewee and hire. The new rules require that information be collected for interviewees and hires. We strongly argued that the EEO rules appply to smaller stations and the FCC did refuse to exempt small stations from compliance. We argued that broadcasters be required to make on-air announcements of the public's right to be informed of job vacancies. Although the Commission is not requiring on-air announcements, it stated that it expected the broadcasters to make reasonable efforts to publicize the notification requirement.
Our most important victory was in our proposal to extend EEO outreach requirements to part-time positions. We argued that this extension would be a great way to increase diversity in the workforce, since many women and minorities enter the workforce through part-time positions. We argued that expanding EEO to part-time positions would survive court scrutiny because it was absolutely race- and gender-neutral. As we made our rounds we were surprised to see even the most conservative Commissioners interested in our proposal. Because this proposal constituted an expansion of the rules, the Commission initiated a new rule-making procedure on the sole question of whether EEO should be extended to part-time employment.
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