T-Mobile, the telecom company that last year closed seven call centers in the United States and shipped more than 3,300 jobs overseas, is running its remaining U.S. call center operations with abusive and intimidating tactics, T-Mobile workers at the company’s Charleston, S.C., call center told a workers' rights hearing (see video, below) last week.

Workers at a number of T-Mobile (owned by Deutsche Telekom) call centers are mobilizing to win a voice at work with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and have been met with a fierce anti-union campaign.

T-Mobile, the telecom company that earlier this year closed seven call centers in the United States and shipped more than 3,300 jobs overseas, is running its remaining U.S. call center operations under what workers describe as a “climate of tyranny,” says Lothar Schroeder of German union ver.di, which represents workers at Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile’s parent company. Schroeder spoke with Reuters. 

Blake Poindexter is a former T-Mobile USA worker who had worked in a call center in Frisco, Texas, before the company announced in March it would close that center along with six others. Last week, he urged Deutsche Telekom CEO René Obermann to respect T-Mobile USA workers’ right to join together in a union and stop the company’s harassment of workers.

This is a cross-post from We Work Better Together, a project of the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

In an open letter published today in the New York Times, 11 leading German legal scholars and politicians called on Deutsche Telekom and other German companies to ensure that workers at German subsidiaries in the United States, particularly T-Mobile USA, are able to “exercise their unrestricted right to opt for organized representation in the company without fear. They must not be influenced, pressured, or intimidated by employers if they exercise their basic right for freedom of association. The human right of freedom of speech notably entails this right as well.”

 Emmelle Israel, AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow, sends us this.

Last week, Deutsche Telekom techs, customer service reps and retail employees from Germany toured the United States to visit with their T-Mobile USA counterparts in Washington, D.C., Nashville, Tenn., and Frisco, Texas, and learn more about the double standard practices the German company adopts when operating abroad.

A delegation of workers and a member of the German Parliament is in the United States this week to show solidarity with T-Mobile workers and shed a light on the double-standard practices of T-Mobile’s German parent company, Deutsche Telekom.

Teresa Casertano in the AFL-CIO Organizing Department’s Global Campaigns section sends us this report.

T-Mobile USA workers were not surprised to learn that a recent report by the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) to the OECD revealed that T-Mobile owner, Deutsche Telekom, had failed to meet its own claims about corporate social responsibility.  Under the corporate social responsibility reporting standards set by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Deutsche Telekom gives itself an A+ rating, yet it provides little evidence to justify granting itself such superior marks.

Teresa Casertano in the AFL-CIO Organizing Department’s Global Campaigns section sends us this report.

Some 50 leaders from communications and information and technology unions around the world took time out from a global conference to sign a letter to Deustche Telecom CEO Rene Obermann, demanding that Deutsche Telecom end its assault on workers’ rights at T-Mobile USA. T-Mobile USA, the largest Deutsche Telekom subsidiary, is waging a vicious anti-union campaign against workers who have chosen to join the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

While T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom, respects workers’ right to bargain collectively in Germany, T-Mobile’s U.S. management has fought workers’ attempts to join the Communications Workers of America (CWA) with campaigns of delaying tactics and interference to intimidate workers.

A complaint filed today with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) describes how Deutsche Telekom has engaged in anti-union activity in the United States that violates the organization’s guidelines for multinational enterprises.