Cohen Meets with Lawmakers on AT&T/T-Mobile Merger

On Capitol Hill this week, CWA President Larry Cohen met with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute and Democratic members of the California delegation on how the AT&T/T-Mobile merger will benefit workers and consumers.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) joined Cohen for the California presentation. She also thanked CWA for its work in the special election in upstate New York that resulted in the election of Democrat Kathy Hochul.

For CWA members at AT&T, the merger will improve AT&T quality. The commitment to build-out will expand AT&T coverage and our members' jobs.

At both meetings, Cohen outlined why the AT&T/T-Mobile merger means good jobs and economic development:

• T-Mobile was going to be sold to either AT&T or Sprint. AT&T is the only union wireless company. Sprint is anti-union and has a record of denying workers' their right to a union voice here at home.
• Sprint shut down La Conexion Familiar, a call center in California, when the 230 predominantly Hispanic women workers were voting for a CWA voice. Sprint outsources its frontline engineering and tech work and has sent as much as 70 percent of call center jobs overseas.
• AT&T has committed to spending an additional $8 billion to build out high-speed wireless broadband to 97 percent of the nation. This means that rural communities that now have little or no access to high-speed broadband will be able to move into the Internet Age. Schools, hospitals and other critical institutions finally will be wired, and economic development and quality jobs will be supported.
• Sprint doesn't have comparable resources for build-out and its bonds are not investment grade. Its spectrum and operating systems are incompatible with T-Mobile. Sprint hasn't yet finished integrating its 2005 purchase of Nextel. AT&T and T-Mobile use the same spectrum and operating systems; this will provide immediate benefits for workers and consumers of both companies.