T-Mobile starts company union, violates US labor law -- again

T-Mobile’s at it again. T-Mobile workers have been trying for years to organize a their own union, but T-Mobile has blocked their efforts repeatedly by breaking labor laws. Now the company has come up with another illegal strategy.

As Bloomberg reports,”T-Mobile has adopted an anti-union tactic that’s been illegal since 1935: creating a company-controlled union to drain support for an independent one.” A company union is controlled by company management instead of representatives elected by the workers. It’s T-Mobile’s latest attempt to suppress support for an independent voice in the workplace.  

“It’s a little bit flattering,” says former T-Mobile employee and current Communications Workers of America organizer Josh Coleman. “We have momentum; the company’s trying to stop it by copying our union.”

“They’re funding this sham union, and it is totally and absolutely illegal, and it is totally and absolutely nonsense,” says CWA President Chris Shelton. “If they want to know what the problems are at T-Mobile, they could meet with folks who are elected by the people of T-Mobile and not by the CEO.”

Last year, the National Labor Relations Board found T-Mobileguilty of nationwide labor law violations. As Speed Matters reported at the time: “At issue were illegal corporate nationwide policies that block workers from organizing or even talking to each other about problems at work. Workers throughout the T-Mobile US system were subjected to and effectively silenced by these illegal policies; the judge’s order to rescind them covers 40,000 workers.”

T-Mobile Accused of Fighting a Real Union by Creating a Fake One (Bloomberg, Apr. 28, 2016)

T-Mobile Guilty of Illegal Corporate Policies Against US Workers (Speed Matters, Mar. 19, 2015)

At Capitol Hill Briefing, T-Mobile Worker Highlight Culture of Fear (CWA, Dec. 3, 2015)