CWA: AT&T-Time Warner Merger Must be Reviewed on Merits, Not Petty Politics

CWA President Chris Shelton is contacting State Attorneys General about the ill-advised lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice to stop the AT&T-Time Warner merger. Shelton is asking the Attorneys General to ensure that the merger is analyzed on its own merits, free from political interference. So far, no State Attorneys General have joined the Department of Justice lawsuit.

In a letter to the Democratic Attorneys General Association, Shelton wrote that the politicization of the review process "is a sad day for the rule of law and freedom of the press." This lawsuit appears to be politically motivated, as evidenced by President Trump's personal vendetta against CNN.

Read the full letter here.

The Department of Justice is demanding, as a condition of approving the AT&T-Time Warner merger, that AT&T divest either DIRECTV or CNN, or both.

CWA represents about 10,000 DIRECTV workers and several hundred workers at CNN, in addition to about 150,000 workers at AT&T.

This merger would help maintain and create good U.S. jobs, by ensuring that workers have a union voice and workplace representation. It also would develop new and innovative ways to deliver technology and content, providing much-needed new competition to companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon where working people don't have union representation.

The Justice Department has claimed that consumers would suffer if this merger were approved, but the notion that spinning off a television network would affect consumer costs is laughable. Vertical mergers just like AT&T-Time Warner, including Comcast-NBC in 2011 and others, routinely have been approved.