CWA President Slams T-Mobile on Unionization; Sees 50/50 Odds Sprint Deal Will Be Approved
Communications Workers of America President Chris Shelton sees T-Mobile’s buy of Sprint as having equal shot of being approved or denied by regulators, Shelton said Tuesday during a taping of C-SPAN's The Communicators. “We think it's a very bad idea,” he said. But Shelton acknowledged CWA has no relationship with the DOJ or FCC officials reviewing the deal. T-Mobile has made no effort to offer concessions to the unions, he said: “I’m always open to talk.”
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T-Mobile may have helped its chances by having T-Mobile executives stay repeatedly in a Washington hotel owned by President Donald Trump (see 1902110046), Shelton said. “Who knows?” he said. The night after the deal was announced CEO John Legere “and nine of his executives had rooms at the Trump Hotel,” he said. T-Mobile didn't comment.
Shelton testified against the transaction last week before the House Communications Subcommittee (see 1902130072). Members on both sides of the aisle listened to CWA’s message, he said: “A cellphone is neither a Democrat or a Republican.” The role Congress will play isn’t clear, he said: “Whether they can convince the FCC to turn down this merger I don’t know.”
In addition to what CWA says will be 30,000 lost jobs, the deal, if approved, would flood the labor market and be detrimental to unionized workers at AT&T and Verizon by driving down wages, Shelton said. CWA has about 60,000 members who work for the wireless side of AT&T and under 500 at Verizon Wireless, he said. CWA has about 300 members at T-Mobile and none at Sprint, he said.
“T-Mobile is a virulently anti-union company that has violated labor law more than any other company” in the U.S. “including such luminaries in that field as Walmart,” Shelton said. T-Mobile doesn’t allow employees to even talk to each other about wages “or anything else,” he said. “If they do, they are disciplined.”
The two companies talk about $43 billion in synergies as part of the transaction, Shelton said. “We take synergies to mean layoffs” since without cutting staff the new T-Mobile would have twice the number of stores as either Verizon or AT&T, he said: “We figure they’re going to close lots and lots stores across the country.”
CWA supported AT&T’s earlier proposal to buy T-Mobile, since AT&T agreed to add jobs and put more money into the company, Shelton said: “We had all of this in writing from AT&T.” T-Mobile, meanwhile, "makes promises all the time it doesn’t keep,” he said. “Maybe if they put some of this in writing it might assuage some of our fears, … There will be a million loopholes if they do it.”
Shelton is a critic of Trump in general. “He thinks that his record” on job creation “is much better than I do,” he said of the president. “I don’t see it” and neither would any working person, he said. “Wages aren’t going up,” he said: “The economy is fine if you’re a billionaire, but it’s not so good if you’re a middle-class working person.” Shelton conceded his politics “absolutely” make it more difficult for CWA to reach out to the administration on T-Mobile/Sprint. “With Republicans controlling the FCC, we don’t have the ability to do almost anything,” he said. Shelton said he has no relationship with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. The FCC and White House didn’t comment.
The U.S. likely isn’t leading the world on 5G, but doing so is important to American workers and to the economy, Shelton said. “Others may be leading or trying to lead,” he said. “We should figure out ways to make sure that that doesn’t happen.”