T-Mobile feels heat on jobs-related concerns, lashes out with unsubstantiated and hypocritical attacks

With a growing number of elected officials and regulators expressing concerns about the jobs-related effects of the proposed T-Mobile-Sprint merger, T-Mobile executives are clearly feeling the heat and starting to worry. How else to explain their ramped-up attempts to attack CWA’s credibility on jobs?

This week, Kathleen Ham, T-Mobile’s senior vice president for government affairs, told Communications Daily that CWA has “no credibility” on jobs - an inaccurate and wildly hypocritical assertion in light of T-Mobile’s real record on jobs and the job-killing impact of the proposed T-Mobile-Sprint merger.

CWA’s comprehensive economic analysis shows that the merger will result in the loss of 30,000 US jobs—25,500 from the closure of overlapping retail stores and 4,500 at headquarters. New Street Research, an independent telecommunications and technology research firm which has been supportive of the merger, has estimated similar losses.

Ham’s comments come after T-Mobile CEO and President John Legere faced tough questioning during a hearing last week before the US House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. T-Mobile is making a desperate attempt to obscure the job-killing impact of the merger by pledging to open customer experience centers if the merger proceeds—but the jobs pledge is filled with loopholes and would not come close to offsetting the 30,000 jobs that would be lost due to the merger. As CWA President Chris Shelton noted at the hearing, “trusting Sprint and T-Mobile with American jobs is like trusting a vampire at a blood bank.”   

According to CWA President Chris Shelton, “T-Mobile is clearly feeling the heat on jobs-related concerns about the merger and is lashing out in a manner that is wildly disingenuous and incredibly hypocritical. T-Mobile has one of the worst records on workers’ rights issues in corporate America and the company has yet to explain why our analysis is incorrect. Just look at the store location maps. In many areas T-Mobile and Sprint stores practically sit on top of each other. They are going to close those stores to create ‘synergy’ for their investors. We know what synergy means—pink slips for working people and more money for the German government, which owns T-Mobile, and Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, who owns Sprint.”