Labor & Employment Law

Global Unions Launch Campaign for Workers? Rights at T-Mobile

By James Parks

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

The global union movement has launched a major worldwide campaign to convince Deutsche Telekom to end its anti-union actions and allow employees at its T-Mobile USA subsidiary to join a union if they choose.

While Deutsche Telekom respects workers? rights in its home country of Germany, T-Mobile workers in the United States and other countries face management campaigns of intimidation and harassment when they indicate they want to form a union and gain collective bargaining rights. Deutsche Telekom has repeatedly refused to stop the anti-union campaign being waged by T-Mobile USA.

 ?We expect better from Deutsche Telekom,? said International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) General Secretary Sharan Burrow.

With operations in some 50 countries, it has established union relations with much of its workforce.  However, in the USA in particular, the company massively violates its responsibility to be neutral towards trade unions and tries to keep unions out of its workplaces. We?re simply asking Deutsche Telekom to respect fundamental rights for all those who work for it around the world, in line with international legal standards.

A special report by Human Rights Watch details the extent to which T-Mobile has gone to try and stop workers from forming a union. The report found that T-Mobile is conducting a vicious anti-union campaign to prevent workers from joining the Communications Workers of America (CWA). T-Mobile routinely distributes anti-union memos to its operations across America and employees often 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, according to the report.

CWA President Larry Cohen says:

Our message to Deutsche Telekom is this: We?re tired of the face of cooperation in Germany and then the club of intolerance in the United States. The global union movement expects better. We expect Deutsche Telekom to follow the standard it has set in Germany?respect for workers? rights.

With the whole world pushing back at Deutsche Telekom, we know that T-Mobile USA workers will get the union voice they want.   

Philip Jennings, general secretary of UNI Global Union, which represents workers in telecoms unions around the world, says:

Deutsche Telekom could improve its international reputation dramatically by simply ensuring that the fundamental human rights of its employees everywhere are respected. We will keep reminding the company of this until such time as it acts responsibly throughout all its operations. Deutsche Telekom should sign up to a global agreement, which guarantees organizing and collective bargaining rights to all its employees in every country.

Members of CWA joined with their colleagues at ver.di, the German telecommunications workers union, in 2009 to create TU?a global union for T-Mobile workers. TU is fighting to end discrimination against workers at T-Mobile USA and other Deutsche Telekom subsidiaries.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on February 15, 2011 (boomark / email).