CWA Champions T-Mobile Merger at AT&T Shareholders' Meeting

The pending AT&T merger with T-Mobile would go a long way toward expanding America's broadband network while improving job security for thousands of T-Mobile workers who finally would have the benefit of union representation, CWA Executive Vice President Annie Hill told AT&T shareholders Friday in Little Rock, Ark.

"Our country needs high-speed broadband for economic development, for jobs and to ensure that all Americans have affordable access to the Internet. This merger will help enormously to achieve those goals," Hill said, speaking on behalf of CWA at the company's annual shareholders meeting.

Workers at both companies, as well as customers will benefit. "Our current members at AT&T Mobility can benefit from the expanded network and higher quality, new innovations, just as T-Mobile employees will benefit from being part of a financially strong company with an executable plan to bring LTE 4G to 97 percent of American households," she said.

T-Mobile's parent company, Deutsche Telekom, wasn't willing to commit funds to build out the 4G network, Hill said.

The other major competitor, Sprint, which is fighting the merger, is "a financially strapped company with 'junk' credit rating, a company that is plagued with problems integrating the networks of prior merger partners," she said, adding that Sprint also outsources technical and customer service work. Further, both Sprint and T-Mobile actively oppose workers' efforts to form and join unions.

"The AT&T merger should be a model to create more union jobs and more secure jobs," Hill said. "Outsourcing critical customer relationships is a bad strategy for our economy and leading wireless companies. With this merger, AT&T has an opportunity to return to the U.S. more jobs at AT&T to serve more customers while maintaining all T-Mobile and AT&T call centers."