T-Mobile Orders Workers to Carry Out Unethical Sales

Just last month, T-Mobile USA carried out a mass firing in Brooklyn, terminating 24 retail store workers and six managers working at about 20 stores.

The workers were fired over contradictory sales policies and supervisors' tactics that were set up to generate more store revenue. But the workers got caught in the middle.

Employees in the T-Mobile sales operations were required to meet quotas, as were their supervisors. Employees who didn't meet their quotas would be terminated.

To meet their store quotas, managers told employees to bundle pre-paid phone sales and activation kits. In fact, workers were warned that if they didn't bundle those two products, their sales numbers would decline and they would be subject to discipline. Bundling sometimes benefits customers, because it provides them with specific services that they need. In this case, however, bundling of the pre-paid phone with an unnecessary activation kit was pure fraud.

Workers, who had raised concerns that the practice was unethical and fraudulent because it required customers to purchase unnecessary activation kits, first were ignored. A group email sent by employees objecting to the practice also was disregarded.

But workers faced real repercussions when T-Mobile USA management finally decided that the bundling was a fraud. Some workers who followed management orders to bundle were fired, and others who followed those same orders were promoted to management.

The T-Mobile workers, like most U.S. employees without a union, are considered at-will employees and don't have the right to claim wrongful discharge. With a collective bargaining agreement, workers who knew that fraud was ongoing would have been heard. CWA is calling for all the workers to be reinstated.