T-Mobile and Sprint announced their intention to merge, with T-Mobile paying Sprint $26 billion and keeping control of the proposed new corporation in the hands of T-Mobile CEO John Legere.
At the Forum of the Deutsche Telekom's Works Councils on November 16, this year's guest speaker, the chair of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) Reiner Hoffmann, addressed the situation at T-Mobile US.
He received a lot of applause for his comment that what is happening at T-Mobile US cannot be tolerated. The situation is absolutely clear, Hoffmann said: "We expect better!". In a globalized economy, the company is responsible for good working conditions and compliance with workers' rights of its employees not only in Germany, but also abroad.
Greg Caron is a 14-year veteran T-Mobile employee who recently decided it was time to take action as major changes threatened to devalue skilled positions at the company. Back in May Greg attended a town hall meeting at the T-Mobile call center in Colorado Springs where Vice President Callie Fields explained the transition to Team of Experts (TEX) customer care call center units. Callie told the crowd at the meeting that there was a strong possibility that Specialized Technical Care (STC) would be outsourced or dissolved and rolled into TEX.
Our partners at ver.di, Germany’s second-largest labor union and the union representing workers at T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom (DT), are helping to build solidarity with our co-workers in Germany.
From Zagreb, Croatia, to Buenos Aires, Argentina, union members around the world are demanding dignity for T-Mobile US employees. At a conference in Zagreb in June, the information technology and telecommunications workers of UNI Europa ICTS unanimously backed our demand that the company respect our right to organize our union.
