AT&T/T-Mobile Merger Would Help California

With California suffering from a 12 percent unemployment rate, the executive secretary-treasurer of the LA County Federation of Labor, Maria Elena Durazo, has endorsed the AT&T/T-Mobile merger. Because, she writes, “The merger would mean jobs today, to build a better wireless network, and jobs tomorrow, which will depend increasingly on wireless technology as a backbone of our infrastructure.”

In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Daily News (October 14, 2011) Durazo has watched as many jobs have dried up in our country’s second-largest metro area. At the same time, she points out, “The amount of traffic that crosses the current data network has exploded 8,000 percent from 2007 to 2010.” There is growth and there could be jobs, but we need “an expanded and upgraded network to get us there, and the AT&T/T-Mobile merger will do just that.”p>Durazo, a longtime community and labor activist, is backing the merger, in part, because “The 23,000 employees at T-Mobile USA will have a free choice about union representation.” As she concludes:

“AT&T has committed to keeping quality jobs here in the U.S., and bringing back a net 5,000 call center jobs from overseas. If more corporations showed that kind of responsibility, we could move out of our economic slump.”

Defending merger between AT&T and T-Mobile (Los Angeles Daily News, Oct. 14, 2011)