T-Union: A New Global Union for T-Mobile Workers

by James Parks, Apr 7, 2008

T-Mobile touts its cell phones with the slogan “Stick Together” and that’s what their workers in the United States and Europe are doing. Last week, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and Ver.di, Germany’s largest union, officially established T-Union, the first-ever union that will unite and represent workers in the United States and Europe.

T-Union is a joint affiliate of both organizations. Top officers of both unions formally signed the new partnership agreement during a video conference April 3. The new union will support T-Mobile workers who want a voice on the job and collective bargaining rights in the United States and other countries. It also will represent German union members who work for T-Mobile in this country. In the past, T-Mobile has been viciously anti-union here in the United States and elsewhere. CWA members have said they believe T-Mobile’s parent, Deutsche Telekom (DT), is attempting to “import” T-Mobile’s American-style, anti-union tactics to Germany. 

CWA President Larry Cohen said T-Union is a “new step in global solidarity” and will be a major part of the struggle for workers’ organizing and bargaining rights around the world.

This is an aspect of organizing that hasn’t been done before—it’s a huge breakthrough.  This new union sends a message to T-Mobile management in the U.S. that workers at Deutsche Telekom and at other T-Mobile operations who have bargaining rights will fight hard to protect them and to support their U.S. counterparts who also want the right to collective bargaining. 

Lothar Schroder, who heads Ver.di’s telecommunications and information technology sector, said management must take this new agreement seriously:

We believe that through this new union we will contribute to working conditions for workers in both countries. Management must get used to the idea that we are representing the interests not only of German workers but of American workers as well. This is the right response to globalization.   

Ver.di, with more than 2.4 million members, represents workers at Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile’s parent company, and holds seats on the company’s supervisory board. Ver.di already represents T-Mobile workers in Germany, and T-Mobile workers in the United Kingdom and nine other European countries have collective bargaining rights.

Workers in a number of T-Mobile locations in the United States have contacted CWA for help in getting a voice. T-Union launched a new website where T-Mobile workers can safely share information and experiences and discuss workplace issues. Click here to reach the new website. On the website, Shawna Knipper, a former T-Mobile employee, sums up why the new union will benefit workers:

 Working together with union-represented T-Mobile workers in Germany will be a positive move. It will help break down the wall that T-Mobile has erected between its German and U.S. workforces and show workers in the U.S. what’s possible with a union.   

The two unions have a history of working together. Last June, dozens of workers spent their lunch hour picketing outside the German Embassy in Washington, D.C., to send a message to DT and the German government that an injustice to German workers is an injustice to all of us. The marchers were supporting striking workers, who were members of Ver.di. The German government is DT’s largest shareholder with 32 percent.

T-Union is the latest example of new cooperative programs in which unions worldwide are working together to stop corporations’ attacks against workers and build bargaining power, in the United States and around the globe. Last April, the United Steelworkers joined with  Amicus, the largest manufacturing union in the United Kingdom, and UK’s Transport and General Workers’ Union and signed an agreement to move toward merger. Amicus and the T&G joined together as one union with 2.1 million members May 1, 2007, that is based in London and is called Unite.

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