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Unions push to organize T-Mobile USA employees
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The Communications Workers of America and a German union called ver.di have forged an alliance to persuade Deutsche Telekom to allow unionizing at its U.S. subsidiary, T-Mobile USA. The two unions have formed a new organization called TUnion, which CWA President Larry Cohn said will try and end the "double standard" of Deutsche Telekom supporting unionized workers in Germany but not in the United States.
Ver.di will represent T-Mobile USA workers and the CWA in negotiations with Deutsche Telekom in Germany. At the same time, the CWA said it would renew its efforts to organize at the nation's fourth largest carrier. The CWA, which for most of the year waged battles with AT&T's wireline division over new contracts, said T-Mobile has persistently tried to stop unions since the company began operating in the U.S. market.
"We're really here to say to multinational companies, in this case Deutsche Telekom, we're tired of the face of cooperation in Germany ... and then the stick in the United States, the club of intolerance," Cohn said at a news conference in Washington, D.C., according to Reuters.
In a statement, T-Mobile defended the workplace environment at the company, and pointed out that "multiple anonymous, third party employee satisfaction surveys taken over the last several years" have shown that more than 70 percent of T-Mobile‘s 40,000 employees are very satisfied with their employment.
"Despite the Communication Workers of America's periodic organizing efforts for more than nine years, no group of T-Mobile employees has ever chosen to be represented by a union," the statement said. "While our company is always striving to find ways to improve, year after year, employees continue to view T-Mobile as a good place to work where they have no need for, or interest in, a union."
For more:
- see this AP article
- see this Reuters article
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Comments
Posted by Anonymous | November 18, 2009 - 7:30pm
If T-Mobile wasn't 25% - 35% behind what our competitors pay and actually promoted its employees maybe they wouldn't have to worry about being unionized.
Posted by Anonymous | November 19, 2009 - 3:51pm
The environment at T-Mobile has been slowly declining for years. I'm a former employee and once enjoyed my time working there. But over the last 2-3 years I was there I became more and more detached from the company. I began to feel underappreciated, under paid and over worked. The responsibilities were mounting and growing but my pay was stagnant and opportunies for growth or advancement were limited. And when the economy started to tank their message was - be happy you have a job. That's never a message you want from your employer. If their employee unionize, it's going to be a major blow to a company that is already struggling to compete.
Posted by Anonymous | November 19, 2009 - 8:52pm
Good luck with that! I lost my last job because of the CWA! They are a socialist group like most unions are! You are only allowed to advance "in line" after the people in front of you do, regardless of performance! Unions are a HUGE downfall to "customer service" companies, and they had a HUGE hand in the downfall of the US steel and auto industries. If you are a lazy ass, unions are for you! They assure the highest number of employees for the least amount of work and make it next to impossible to get rid of the "old dead wood" in the company! AT&T Wireless's employees are the most unhappy employees I have ever seen! That was the best place to work up until Cingular came in and forced everyone into the union! Why aren't they going after Verizon? They are the biggest with the happiest employees! In stead, they try to capitalize on a struggling company in a bad economy to completely destroy the company. You're right...it would be a blow! Unfortunately, the Customer Service employees are the ones they go after, and the first to bite. The field employees usually don't have much of a say in it, since they are outnumbered by the CS employees by 100:1, and get dragged into the abyss! Sprint contracted out all of it's field employees to avoid the issue, and frankly, I would rather be a contractor than a union employee! Yes, there are problems with T-Mobile's "advancement opportunities", but they are also a fairly new company in the US and still have some learning to do.
Unions are NOT the answer...they are the problem!
Posted by bigunk | November 20, 2009 - 9:49am
Unions are for the birds. They do nothing but keep good employees down, promote the worthless who toe the union line, and cause companies to go out of business due to higher costs that they can't recover in the marketplace.
I wish the unions would just dry up and blow away. Their time and value are all used up. They have nothing left to contribute.
A lot of the labor laws are the result of unions pushing for decent wages and safe workplaces. The laws are solid. The unions have nothing left to contribute. All they do is suck money out of companies and their employees.
That's right, they suck from their own worker drones in the form of high dues that fund political campaigns for their stooges that enact more business crushing laws. Then the cycle repeats itself.
Unions are the wart on the ass of a good productive society. We need to eliminate all the union bosses and keep one on display in the zoo so we know what not to go back to.
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