On Mar 3, 9:58 am, Steve Bonine wrote:

Is this a common situation?

I've never heard of it before.

Do you think it's a good idea?

No. At least not as a formal requirement for the job. I'm all for
encouraging and recruiting new hams,
and supporting them, but forcing them to be licensed as a condition of
employment is not a good idea, except maybe
in certain specific conditions.

Here's why:

(insert standard "I-am-not-a-lawyer" disclaimer HERE)

One of the rules about hiring-and-firing is that you cannot make
something a formal requirement for a job unless it is a reasonable
part of the normal job duties. For example, if the job involves
typical office work, you can't make it a requirement that an employee
be able to lift a 100 pound box and place it on a shelf 6 feet above
the floor unless doing so is a normal part of the job. Once in a blue
moon isn't good enough.

OTOH, if the job requires that a person occasionally drive a company
vehicle, having the required driver's licenses to do so is a
reasonable expectation.

So if an employer wants all hires to have a ham license, one has to
ask if using ham radio for communications is a routine part of the
job. If it's not, then the requirement isn't reasonable. If it is,
then we have to ask about the "pecuniary interest" part of Part 97.

The specific conditions I mentioned above a

1) If a school had ham radio as part of the curriculum, and a specific
teacher was expected to be able to operate the station so the students
could, say, talk to the Space Shuttle. Even this is not clear-cut
because a volunteer or one of the students could be the control
operator.

2) If an organization like ARRL Hq or a museum needed someone to
operate an amateur station as part of their normal duties (demos,
bulletins, etc.)

Both of those are specifically provided for in Part 97.

The problems I see with requiring employees in other situations to be
hams a

1) It weakens the no-pecuniary-interest thing.
2) It creates a number of amateurs whose fundamental focus isn't
"radio for its own sake" but rather "something I gotta do for the
job". Which isn't good.

IMHO

73 de Jim, N2EY