T-Mobile Workers' Message Resonates at Global Union World Meeting

The struggle by T-Mobile US workers for a voice in the workplace found strong support among delegates to the UNI World Congress in Cape Town, South Africa, this week, CWA President Larry Cohen said.

CWA President Larry Cohen and ver.di leader Lothar Schröder talk T-Mobile.

Below: ver.di members in Germany show support for their U.S. colleagues at T-Mobile.

Cohen presented a video, shown below, demonstrating the partnership between T-Mobile US activists and members of ver.di, the union that represents workers at Deutsche Telekom (DT), the German corporation and parent company of TMUS. Cohen was joined in the presentation by Lothar Schröder, deputy chairman of the supervisory board of DT and a ver.di leader.

"The video we've just seen documents a new standard of international solidarity," Cohen said. "ver.di has been amazing. The solidarity has been spectacular and goes deeper than the bond between Lothar and I. ver.di and CWA created TU, which is a true partnership. Our TU members belong both to ver.di and CWA."

More than 2,000 labor leaders from around the world came to the UNI Global Congress in Cape Town on the 20th anniversary of South Africa's emergence from the apartheid regime that saw that nation's leaders like Nelson Mandela jailed and the black population disenfranchised. UNI Global Union is a global federation that represents more than 20 million workers from over 900 service sector unions worldwide.

T-Mobile call-center supervisors harass workers in the United States for daring to organize their workplaces, including summary firings and repeated captive audience interrogations. The German government is the largest shareholder in DT, which holds a 67% stake in T-Mobile. DT's workforce in Germany and the rest of Europe have bargaining rights.

Schröder pointed to solidarity as one of the main reasons for joining with T-Mobile US workers. But he said an equally important reason is that if the Deutsche Telekom corporation is a well-oiled machine, with workers as indispensable components in how it functions, then the virulent anti-labor practices of its U.S. subsidiary T-Mobile are a defect in that machine.

"T-Mobile's labor relations disrupt that model. ver.di does not want Deutsche Telekom or other German companies to import the American model of disposable workers back to Germany," Schröder said.