Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile’s Parent, Fails to Live Up to Its Claims on Labor Rights
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Teresa Casertano in the AFL-CIO Organizing Department’s Global Campaigns section sends us this report.
T-Mobile USA workers were not surprised to learn that a recent report by the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) to the OECD revealed that T-Mobile owner, Deutsche Telekom, had failed to meet its own claims about corporate social responsibility. Under the corporate social responsibility reporting standards set by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Deutsche Telekom gives itself an A+ rating, yet it provides little evidence to justify granting itself such superior marks.
The TUAC report details the company’s failure to report on global standards and finds that Deutsche Telekom highlighted its practices in its home country of Germany while failing to disclose its labor and human rights record in its non-German operations. The company claims 14 core labor and human rights indicators are “covered completely” in its GRI Report, while a fifteenth is “covered partly.” In fact, the TUAC report shows that only two are covered completely, seven are covered partly, and six are not covered at all. The TUAC report also finds that Deutsche Telekom disproportionately focuses its employee reporting on management employees while making little reference to its policies for tens of thousands of non-management employees. According to the report, only one of Deutsche Telekom’s 17 reported sustainability “Key Performance Indicators” relates to workers at all.
Global Union Leaders Demand Fair Treatment for T-Mobile
Teresa Casertano in the AFL-CIO Organizing Department’s Global Campaigns section sends us this report.
Some 50 leaders from communications and information and technology unions around the world took time out from a global conference to sign a letter to Deustche Telecom CEO Rene Obermann, demanding that Deutsche Telecom end its assault on workers’ rights at T-Mobile USA. T-Mobile USA, the largest Deutsche Telekom subsidiary, is waging a vicious anti-union campaign against workers who have chosen to join the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
Strongly objecting to DT’s behavior in the United States, the leaders stated:
Today we demand that Deutsche Telekom end its systematic messaging assault against T-Mobile workers who choose to participate in union organizing. We also demand that DT take concrete steps to demonstrate respect for workers’ rights by implementing a policy in which management agrees not to oppose the organizing efforts of T-Mobile USA workers and to allow the workers the freedom to participate in union activities without fear of reprisals or job loss.
Participants at last week’s UNI Global Union ICTS global conference in Mexico City also pledged Read the rest of this entry »
Join the Campaign to Gain a Voice for T-Mobile Workers
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While T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom, respects workers’ right to bargain collectively in Germany, T-Mobile’s U.S. management has fought workers’ attempts to join the Communications Workers of America (CWA) with campaigns of delaying tactics and interference to intimidate workers.
You can help T-Mobile employees gain a voice on the job by signing a petition here telling Deutsche Telekom we expect better from a corporation that asserts it’s committed to social justice. Join in by demanding that T-Mobile USA stop bullying workers and agree to end all interference in their workers’ decision to join CWA. The petition is sponsored by LabourStart in partnership with the global 20 million-member UNI Global Union.
AT&T Vows to Return 5,000 Jobs to U.S., but Dept. of Justice Action Threatens Jobs
If AT&T’s merger with T-Mobile is approved, AT&T will bring 5,000 wireless jobs now performed offshore back to the United States, the company announced this week. AT&T also promised the merger will not result in any job losses for current call center workers at AT&T Mobility or T-Mobile USA.
Today’s announcement by the Justice Department that it will sue to block the merger “is simply wrong [and] puts good jobs and workers’ rights at the bottom of the government’s priorities,” the Communications Workers of America (CWA) says in a statement released this afternoon.
Instead of acting to block this merger, our government should be looking to support companies that create, keep and return good jobs to the United States.
The jobs that returned to this country “will provide quality wages and benefits and good working conditions for U.S. workers,” says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
T-Mobile Workers Defy Anti-Union Tactics, Vote for CWA
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A group of T-Mobile technicians in Hamden, Conn., are the first T-Mobile workers to win a voice at work with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) after yesterday’s vote in the 15-worker unit.
While T-Mobile’s parent company Deutsche Telekom (DT) respects workers’ right to bargain collectively in Germany, T-Mobile’s U.S. management has fought workers’ organizing attempts with campaigns of delaying tactics and interference to intimidate workers. CWA Local 1298 President Bill Henderson says:
This vote made history, with T-Mobile workers fighting back to beat the odds and win the union voice they want. It showed the desire of people to have a union and an even playing field. Hopefully this will mean a new direction for all working people.
Global Unions File Complaint Against T-Mobile’s Parent
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A complaint filed today with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) describes how Deutsche Telekom has engaged in anti-union activity in the United States that violates the organization’s guidelines for multinational enterprises.
The complaint, filed by the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the German union ver.di and the global union federation UNI Global Union, details the union-busting activity of Deutsche Telekom’s wholly owned subsidiary T-Mobile USA, which “has engaged in a pattern of conduct designed to undermine and frustrate employees’ efforts to choose union representation freely and to deny employees their rights to collective bargaining.”
U.S. Rep. Condemns T-Mobile’s Anti-Union Campaign in NLRB Rule Hearing
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During yesterday’s Republican-dominated House Education and Workforce hearing on proposed rules changes by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), working men and women packed the hearing. Their message that workers’ right to join a union should be protected was repeated by the Democratic members of the committee in sharp questioning of the mostly anti-worker witnesses.
Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) read into the record the worker testimony from William Reitz, a T-Mobile USA technician who, along with other techs from Long Island, filed for union election in May. In response, T-Mobile has engaged in frivolous claims and delay tactics at the NLRB. T-Mobile has used the time it has gained by filing charges at the NLRB to harass and intimidate the workers–supposed to provide ”the facts” to the employees. (See video above)
Global Labor Ramps Up Campaign to End T-Mobile’s Anti-Union Tactics
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Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of T-Mobile USA, boasts in its annual report on corporate responsibility that it is committed to the global labor standards established by the International Labor Organization (ILO), a branch of the United Nations. Except, it appears, when it comes to T-Mobile workers in the United States.
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) President Sharan Burrow says Deutsche Telekom—of which the German government is the dominant shareholder—is
actively and deliberately violating these very rights in its overseas operations.
T-Mobile workers throughout the U.S. are fighting to join a union—the Communications Workers of America (CWA)— but the company has hired union-busting attorneys and is conducting a classic anti-union campaign with mandatory captive audience meetings, delaying tactics and other intimidation measures, says UNI Global Union General Secretary Philip Jennings. UNI represents workers in telecoms unions around the world.
If these workers were in Germany, they would have become members of the union automatically but T-Mobile USA management has launched a brutal intimidation campaign to keep the union out of the workplace and to scare the workers out of fighting for their rights. Read the rest of this entry »
AT&T/T-Mobile Merger is in Public Interest
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Not only would a merger between AT&T and T-Mobile mean that T-Mobile’s more than 20,000 workers have the chance to choose a union without interference, but it would open the door for a high-speed broadband build-out to 97 percent of the population, helping close the digital divide.
To ensure AT&T’s pledge to build out, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should, if they approve the merger, include service and speed benchmarks the telecommunications giant must meet or face penalties, Communications Workers of America (CWA) research economist Debbie Goldman told an Economic Policy Institute (EPI) policy forum on the merger this morning.
When we weigh all public benefits of the merger against the harm, we believe this in enormous public interest for America.
She said that when T-Mobile’s parent firm, Deutsche Telekom, made the decision to sell its U.S. subsidiary, “The choice was T-Mobile was going to be sold and who was going to buy it. AT&T is cleary the better choice.” If the merger isn’t approved, it is likely Read the rest of this entry »
AT&T/T-Mobile Merger Would Be Major Gain for Workers’ Rights
The proposed merger between AT&T and T-Mobile will not only bring a wide range of benefits to consumers but as important, writes Nathan Newman on the Daily Kos today, it would bring benefits to T-Mobile workers who now “face a complete atmosphere of fear and intimidation.”
On top of the normal threats of being fired if they form a union, T-Mobile workers were told by the company that they would be punished if they said anything negative about the company even on their personal Facebook page.
AT&T is the ONLY unionized wireless company in the country and the merger would ensure that 20,000-plus T-Mobile workers would have the chance to join the 43,000 currently unionized AT&T Mobility employees with decent wages and legal protections on the job.
Newman says the progressive community—some of which have criticized the merger—should focus “on the massive gain for workers’ rights from the merger.” He writes that the most likely alternative if the merger is not approved would be Sprint Nextel- T-Mobile merger and that would be terrible news for T-Mobile workers.
