CWA and Ver.di to T-Mobile: Respect All Your Workers' Rights

CWA President Chris Shelton traveled to Liverpool, England, this week to participate in UNI Global Union's World Congress where he joined Lothar Schröder, the leader of German labor union ver.di, in making a strong statement to T-Mobile that it must change its behavior on respecting workers' rights or the unions will not be able to support a potential Sprint/T-Mobile merger.

Shelton also highlighted the efforts of T-Mobile US workers to join together to fight for better working conditions, and how ver.di, the union that represents German telecom workers at T-Mobile and its parent company Deutsche Telekom (DT), has built a strong partnership with T-Mobile US workers.

While DT respects the freedom of working people in Germany to join together in a union, T-Mobile US has illegally interfered with efforts by workers in the United States to organize.

"Now that T-Mobile is deciding that they're going to merge with Sprint, it's time for them to give their employees the right to join a union if they want to," said Shelton. "We want to thank our brothers and sisters from ver.di for all the support they've given us over the years."

Shelton also spoke at an event along with call center worker Paola Dirocie of SITRATEL union who works at Teleperformance, an overseas contractor for AT&T, and Ygnacio Hernandez of FEDOTRAZONAS union in the Dominican Republic. As CWA members at AT&T in the U.S. are fighting for good call center jobs through mobilization and bargaining, CWA is supporting Teleperformance workers so that workers in both countries can't be manipulated by AT&T into a false competition that erodes working conditions for everyone. Shelton's letter and phone call to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson resulted in Teleperformance agreeing to respect its workers' rights to join together.

Top Left: CWA President Chris Shelton Shelton joined Lothar Schröder, the leader of German labor union ver.di, in making a strong statement to T-Mobile that it must change its behavior on respecting workers' rights or the unions will have to oppose a potential Sprint/T-Mobile merger.
Top Right: Shelton and Schröder at a booth in the UNI convention hall highlighting and detailing CWA and ver.di's joint campaign to help T-Mobile workers join together to fight for better working conditions.
Bottom: Shelton spoke at an event along with Teleperformance call center worker Paola Dirocie, gender secretary of SITRATEL, the local union representing Teleperformance workers, and Ygnacio Hernandez, General Secretary of FEDOTRAZONAS, the national federation representing call center workers in the Dominican Republic.