Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile’s Parent, Fails to Live Up to Its Claims on Labor Rights
 |
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 Unions Demand G-20 Focus on Jobs
The global union movement is calling on the labor ministers of the world’s top economies, known as the G-20, to create millions of new jobs around the world. In a statement prepared for the labor ministers meeting next week in Paris, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) and Global Unions say 110 million jobs are needed by 2015 just to return G-20 countries to pre-crisis levels. That’s 22 million new jobs every year. Read the global unions’ statement here.
“Stretching from China to Chile, we’re seeing the longest unemployment line the world has ever seen,” says ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow.
Workers, not bankers, will drive the world out of the economic crisis. Big Business is using the economic crisis as a smokescreen to push down wages. Collective bargaining rights are the most effective antidote to greed and will foster growth. Workers know first-hand why it’s important to have a decent wage, and a strong and vibrant business.
Trumka Helps Launch ‘Exiting from the Crisis’ at Global Economic Forum
 |
||||
|
||||
The global union movement today took a step forward in its effort to move the global economy away from the failed policies of the past and toward a bold new economic model that focuses on creating jobs and more equitable and sustainable growth.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka joined union leaders from around the world for the 50th Anniversary Forum of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) in Paris, where they held the European launch of “Exiting From the Crisis,” a volume of essays from more than 30 global trade union leaders and economists.
The book was released last month at the AFL-CIO and now you can go online here where we feature links and nine videos of presentations at the forum held at the book release in Washington, D.C., including one by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, who wrote the foreword to the book. Check out a page of videos from the release here.
World’s Workers Standing with U.S. Public Employees
The freedom to bargain for a better life through a union is recognized as a basic human right around the world. With politicians in the United States trying to take away that basic freedom from public employees, working people around the globe are responding with strong expressions of solidarity.
Several major international workers’ organizations and labor federations in more than 20 countries have spoken out against the abuse of power and assault on U.S. workers.
Global Union Leaders: G-20 Needs to Focus on Jobs
 |
||||
|
||||
The finance ministers of the world’s top 20 economies (G-20) should stop catering to the same banks and financiers who caused the global economic crisis and start focusing on the millions of people who are still losing their jobs and suffering from cuts to public services, global union leaders said yesterday.
The world economy is not out of the woods yet, and the cuts in public expenditure being announced by many of the G-20 countries have made the risk of a deeper recession more likely, said International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) General Secretary Sharan Burrow.
The finance ministers, who met in South Korea over the weekend, showed no evidence of governments working together, except to reinforce their apparent determination to achieve “fiscal consolidation” to appease the financial markets, Burrow added.
Global Union Leaders: Focus on Jobs, Not Deficits
 |
|
Global union leaders called on G-20 governments to deliver the promise made at the Pittsburgh summit to “put quality employment at the heart of the recovery” and focus on creating jobs in the short term to sustain the recovery and reduce public deficits in the medium term.
The union leaders from the G-20 countries are warning their governments that efforts to cut budgets and impose fiscal austerity now could plunge the international economy into another, deeper recession. The statement was issued yesterday by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the Trade Union Advisory Council (TUAC) to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD).
G-20 Labor Leaders Meet at AFL-CIO for Labor Summit
 |
||||
|
||||
When the world’s banks were going under, governments jumped to their aid. Now with record numbers of people out of work, it’s past time for governments to put working people first, or the fledgling economic recovery could fall apart. Leaders from the G-20 nations issued this warning while in Washington, D.C., this week for the first-ever meeting of G-20 labor ministers and employment ministers with labor and business leaders April 20-21.
The global union movement has been working to create a G-20 working group on employment and social protection since the global economic crisis erupted in 2008. Beginning at the summit in Pittsburgh last September, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has taken a leading role in the effort to make good jobs the central element in any global economic recovery. The federation hosted a meeting of G-20 labor economists in March to draft policy proposals for the labor ministers’ meeting. Trumka was a lead speaker from the global unions at the ministers’ meeting as well.
The G-20, which is now the main body for global economic policy, includes the leaders of the world’s major economies, together constituting 85 percent of world output and 60 percent of global employment.
Global Unions: Put Jobs First at G-20
 |
|
At the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh this week, the world’s leaders need to focus on the urgent need to create millions of new jobs and reform the global financial and trading system.
More than 50 trade union leaders from around the world, including AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, will meet with the G-20 leaders to press the case for a coordinated global economic strategy to stimulate new jobs to ensure a real recovery.
With 59 million people expected to be unemployed worldwide by the end of the year, Guy Ryder, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), says:
Governments must do much more to arrest the plunge in jobs as tens of millions of people, especially young people and those in precarious jobs, find themselves facing a future without work. Coordinated global action to maintain and create jobs is required, and this has to start with the Pittsburgh Summit. Any talk of recovery has little meaning until people are getting back to work.
Unions Pushing for Global Jobs Policy
 |
The global union movement is pushing hard to make sure the issue of jobs is high on the agenda when leaders of the G-20 governments meet in Pittsburgh in September.
Around the world, unemployment and lack of decent work are devastating economies. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that another 20 million women and men soon could be out of work.
A plan developed by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) at the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) calls for G-20 governments to spend at least 2 percent of their nation’s gross domestic product on solving the crisis. Currently, European nations are spending no more than 1 percent. The plan urges a coordinated international recovery and sustainable growth plan to create jobs.
Global Unions: G-8 Didn’t Do Enough to Address Economic Crises
 |
|
The leaders of the world’s top economies failed to adequately address the three major economic crises facing the world—unemployment, climate change and development, according to leaders of unions around the globe who had called on the G-8 summit last week in Italy to take strong action to stimulate the global economy.
Said John Evans, general secretary of the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD) :
There are no explicit commitments to making the necessary resources available for achieving employment and social protection goals, although the focus on the need to protect the tax base represents a welcome step in this direction.
