T-Mobile Workers Take Fight for Union to Shareholders

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/05/04/t-mobile-workers-take-fight-for-union-to-shareholders/

by James Parks, May 4, 2010

T-Mobile USA employees and Communications Workers of America (CWA) Vice President Ed Mooney traveled to Cologne, Germany, last week and joined with their colleagues at ver.di, the German telecommunications workers union, to tell shareholders about the company’s double standard to deny its U.S. employees the freedom to join a union.

In many countries around the world, T-Mobile’s parent, Deutsche Telekom (DT), follows internationally recognized labor and human rights, including the freedom of association and the freedom to join a union. But not in the United States. Here, the German company allows management to harass and intimidate workers who want to join a union.


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


Some 50 ver.di members leafleted the entrances to DT’s annual shareholders meeting in Cologne with a flier that described T-Mobile’s “Wild West” tactics.

Inside the meeting, Kornelia Dubbel, a ver.di member and member of the T-Mobile supervisory board, told shareholders DT is known in the United States as an employer who spreads fear among its workers.

There is fear of arbitrary dismissal for being “caught” by management for simply taking and reading a leaflet from the union, the Communications Workers of America. Why do you act this way?

For many years, American management at T-Mobile has prevented CWA from introducing itself to the workers. That is the only way workers will have a choice as to whether they want to become a union member. But that is exactly what American management does not want!

FULL story at link.