T-Mobile Workers Take Fight for Union to Shareholders

by James Parks, May 4, 2010

CWA Vice President Ed Mooney leaflets outside the Deutsche Telekom annual meeting in Cologne, Germany.

T-Mobile USA employees and Communications Workers of America (CWA) Vice President Ed Mooney traveled to Cologne, Germany, last week and joined with their colleagues at ver.di, the German telecommunications workers union, to tell shareholders  about the company’s double standard to deny its U.S. employees the freedom to join a union.

In many countries around the world, T-Mobile’s parent, Deutsche Telekom (DT), follows internationally recognized labor and human rights, including the freedom of association and the freedom to join a union. But not in the United States. Here, the German company allows management to harass and intimidate workers who want to join a union.

Some 50 ver.di members leafleted the entrances to DT’s annual shareholders meeting in Cologne with a flier that described T-Mobile’s “Wild West” tactics.

Inside the meeting, Kornelia Dubbel, a ver.di member and member of the T-Mobile supervisory board, told shareholders DT is known in the United States as an employer who spreads fear among its workers.

There is fear of arbitrary dismissal for being “caught” by management for simply taking and reading a leaflet from the union, the Communications Workers of America. Why do you act this way?

For many years, American management at T-Mobile has prevented CWA from introducing itself to the workers. That is the only way workers will have a choice as to whether they want to become a union member. But that is exactly what American management does not want!

DT’s social charter and other guidelines set high standards for the way management should run the company, Dubbel said.

But what good is a social charter, what good are guidelines, if workers are afraid to take leaflets or contact the union? I have seen this treatment first hand.

In a recent study, John Logan, a professor at San Francisco State University, found that DT is not exporting the constructive and cooperative labor practices it uses in Germany and other countries to the United States. Instead, he said, he found:

• In 2003, T-Mobile distributed “The Union Free Privilege,” an anti-union memo, to its operations across America.
• Routinely, T-Mobile security officers take down the license plate numbers of workers who take union leaflets outside T-Mobile call center and support facilities.
• T-Mobile employees are forced to attend management-led meetings where they are warned about joining a union, with both implied and open threats that they will be fired for doing so.
• In 2008, an updated anti-union memo was distributed secretly to front-line managers offering instructions on what to do if CWA organizers attempt to communicate with T-Mobile rank-and-file employees. 

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