T-Mobile-MetroPCS Deal Will Result in Significant Job Cuts, FCC Must Give Transaction Full Scrutiny

Washington, D.C. -- In an Ex Parte filing today,  the Communications Workers of America stressed that the $30 billion deal, involving 38,000 employees and 43 million subscribers at T-Mobile and Metro PCS, is simply too big and too controversial to be handled at the Bureau Level. Instead, the full Commission should vote on this major transaction.  CWA pointed out that the full Commission has voted on much smaller transactions, including the $72 million Guam Cellular/DoCOMo Guam transaction and the $2.8 billion AT&T/Dobson deal. There is no reason that the full Commission should not fully evaluate and assess all the elements of this $30 billion deal.

Read CWA’s filing here.

The refusal of T-Mobile and MetroPCS to provide a verifiable commitment to preserve jobs should be a red flag.  T-Mobile and MetroPCS have proffered only hollow promises and magical synergy numbers in response to CWA’s detailed analysis of the confidential documents the companies provided to the Commission during this review – documents that clearly show the job loss from this transaction is significant.

Numerous parties – including 62 members of the House of Representatives, state and local officials including mayors in Florida, South Carolina, and Virginia, the NAACP, National Consumers League, Sierra Club, Center for Community Change, Alliance of Retired Americans, AFL-CIO, SEIU, USAction, and more than 18,500 consumers have also urged the FCC to protect existing jobs as it reviews this transaction, as well as expand opportunities in the United States.

For these reasons, it is imperative that the full Commission review this transaction.

Contact: Candice Johnson or Kendra Marr Chaikind, CWA Communications, 202-434-1168,
cjohnson@cwa-union.org and kmarr@cwa-union.org