Der Spiegel: Employees at T-Mobile Face "Brutal Psychological Terror"

Der Spiegel exposes T-Mobile's shocking work conditions.

The German weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel is out with an expose on the appalling working conditions at T-Mobile USA, detailing the "brutal psychological terror" faced by workers.

The article came out of an interview earlier this month with CWA President Larry Cohen and Lothar Schröder, executive board member of ver.di, Germany's largest union representing telecommunications workers. It has since been picked up internationally and featured in a number of tech publications. The story is now being covered in the UK by Reuters, in the US by the Chicago Tribune, in Austria by Der Standard, in Switzerland by NZZ.

Der Spiegel, one of Europe's largest publications with a weekly circulation of more than 1 million, reports that to attract a buyer for the troubled company, T-Mobile's German parent company Deutsche Telekom has instituted extreme performance measures on more than 30,000 American call center workers:

Whoever is not able to reach these high expectations is faced with disciplinary measures, harassment and threatened with termination or other professional consequences, workers explain in the interviews. If all that doesn't help, workers are even being shamed in public. For example, call center employees in Chattanooga had to wear a dunce cap for hours to demonstrate their alleged failure, when they were not able to meet their numbers.

A 41 year old employee, who suffered under this measure several times, reports that the dunce cap was moved from desk to desk until it ended up at her desk. Never in her life, she says, did she feel so belittled and ridiculed.

The harassment didn't end there:

In other call centers, coaches were made to wear ridiculous backpacks, if their team's performance did not meet the numbers. Other workers are being sent home to write an extended essay. The topic of the unpaid homework: "Why T-Mobile should keep employing me." The unionists document that if the result is not satisfying, continuous humiliation, discipline and even termination follow.

And the pressure to meet impossible performance goals has only been hurting customers. Der Spiegel writes that to keep up with the competition, T-Mobile has resorted to unsavory business practices:

Trying to meet the performance goals, employees have taken to using dubious methods, which T-Mobile internally calls "slamming." Slamming occurs when customers are buying a cell phone and costly features are being added to their account without their knowledge. That way, employees can improve their sales numbers temporarily.

CWA and ver.di are now developing a campaign on both side of the Atlantic to raise awareness about how T-Mobile treats employees.

Click here to read the full article in German. The English translation can be found here.