News

The Communications Workers of America (CWA), ver.di and UNI attended Deutsche Telekom's shareholder meeting today in Cologne.



The company is letting down its stakeholders. To workers in the United States, Montenegro and some other countries, it is intolerant to trade unions. To communities and consumers, the company receives government subsidies while failing to invest in building its network. To investors, the company's performance, in the U.S. and in other countries, is dragging down the share price. CWA is distributing informed commentary on Deutsche Telekom and its U.S. subsidiary T-Mobile USA, which you can download below.



The shareholder meeting was attended by thousands of people, many of them individual German citizens, given the company's history as a publicly-run institution in Germany. A group of workers from T-Mobile USA attended, who can personally attest to the company's poor treatment of workers in their country. The CWA delegation, along with local German union activists, distributed information at the meeting to build awareness amongst shareholders of the company's double standards on labour rights. Later in the week, the U.S. workers will visit German works councils and talk about their work experiences with German politicians. You can learn more about the company's anti-union activities in the U.S. by clicking here.



Kornelia Dubbel of ver.di spoke at the AGM about the issues T-Mobile workers face in the United States.



"American T-Mobile workers and shareholders have come all the way over the Atlantic today to participate in the Annual Meeting. They have come to express their concern how differently Deutsche Telekom treats its German workers and its workers abroad. Especially in the US, DT is known as an employer who spreads fear among its workers. Fear of artbitrary dismissal for being "caught" by management for taking and reading leaflets from the union CWA. Why do you act this way?" asked Ms. Dubbel.



On May Day this weekend, Lothar Schroeder, an employee representative on Deutsche Telekom's supervisory board of directors in Germany, gave a speech supporting the union campaign for fair labour standards throughout the company's operations. You can see a video of the speech by clicking here.



These actions are part of a wider set of activities the unions are taking to encourage Deutsche Telekom to sign a global agreement with UNI which guarantees the basic rights of its employees.



A few weeks ago, U.S. Congress Representatives. George Miller and Rob Andrews started circulating a letter to members of the House Education and Labor Committee. The letter is addressed to Rene Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom and points out the divergence between US and German labour relations at Deutsche Telekom. A copy of the letter is attached here.



On 9 April, UNI, CWA and ver.di held a press conference in Bonn, Germany to release a research report called Lowering the Bar which found various labour rights abuses by T-Mobile USA, and called for an end to the double standard.



To stay in touch with the employee actions at T-Mobile:

http://twitter.com/realtmobile

http://www.facebook.com/loweringthebar