Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) joins T-Mobile workers? campaign for rights at work

In the United States, AT&T is the only major wireless phone company whose workers are represented by a union (and that union is CWA). Workers at T-Mobile USA have launched a campaign to gain union representation by CWA as well, but they are meeting stiff resistance from T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom.

But it seems that Deutsche Telekom has a double standard.  Virtually all of its landline and mobile workers alike are represented by ver.di, a service-sector union representing 2.2 million German workers.

This begs the question: why is Deutsche Telekom open to unionization in Germany, but behaving like typical American union-busters at T-Mobile USA?

A growing number of members of the U.S. Congress have been wondering the same thing. On October 7, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand wrote to Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann asking why this unfair double standard has been applied to American workers. Coming just a week after a similar letter from Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Gillibrand demands (full text here) that Deutsche Telekom grant its workers in the United States the freedom to choose to form a union.

"Deutsche Telekom has been an exemplary employer in Germany, where you allow your employees to unionize and negotiate for livable wages and fair benefits. I am simply asking for equal treatment for employees in the US," Senator Gillibrand states.

Like Brown, Gillibrand cites a report by American Rights at Work titled "Lowering the Bar or Setting the Standard? Deutsche Telekom's U.S. Labor Practices," which, she says, "presents proof that T-Mobile has a policy that requires employees to report union activity to their managers." She further criticizes Deutsche Telekom for having “repeatedly been brought before the National Labor Relations Board for violations of labor policy."

In addition to the ARAW report, Human Rights Watch recently issued a report that documented the anti-union double standard applied by several European companies to their U.S. operations. It seems that Deutsche Telekom isn’t the only transnational corporation taking advantage of the strongly anti-union business environment here in the United States.

Gillibrand and Brown are just the latest elected officials to express their concern with Deutsche Telekom's U.S. labor practices. Fifteen members of the California Democratic Congressional Delegation (letter here), another 26 Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives (letter here), 7 Republican members of the House of Representatives, Senator John Kerry (D-MA), Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), and New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli have all written to D-T condemning its double standards on workers rights.

To learn more about this international campaign in the wireless industry visit the T-Mobile workers’ website at www.loweringhtebarforus.org. You can also follow the campaign on Twitter @realtmobile and like it on Facebook.