Grande Communications faces a possible $10,000 fine for violating FCC...
Grande Communications faces a possible $10,000 fine for violating FCC equal employment opportunity rules at eight Texas employment units, which were deemed by the Media Bureau as not compliant with EEO rules for last year. A bureau audit covering 2010…
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and 2011 found the cable operator didn’t “recruit widely” for 34 job openings, or 28 percent of jobs filled during that time at those systems by Grande. The company relied “solely on the use of Internet websites for those vacancies,” violating EEO rules, a bureau order and notice of apparent liability said Monday (http://xrl.us/bncu8q). “While the Commission does not require the use of a specific number of recruitment sources, if a source or sources cannot reasonably be expected, collectively, to reach the entire community, as here, a unit may be found in noncompliance.” The rules don’t allow Internet-only recruitment, the bureau noted, something which agency officials have also said publicly (CD Jan 5 p2). Atlantic Broadband owns Grande. Grande “is committed to its EEO programs” and “has an outstanding record in hiring and retaining a diverse workforce,” General Counsel Bartlett Leber of Atlantic Broadband told us. “In response to the FCC’s inquiries, we've already added newspaper recruiting to all of our openings.” Grande “feels that in this day and age, we don’t really see a reason why Internet recruiting is not the appropriate source to find technology and broadband employees,” she said. The bureau’s view is that “because of these recruiting failures in all eight of Grande’s units, we find that the Units also did not adequately analyze their recruitment programs on an ongoing basis to ensure that they were effective in achieving broad outreach or address any problems found as a result of their analysis,” the order said. “Had the Units effectively examined their practices, they should have noted the continuing nature of their failure to satisfy their wide recruitment obligation and could have taken the needed steps to correct it."