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In the U.S. Congress, Representatives. George Miller and Rob Andrews are circulating a letter to members of the House Education and Labor Committee. The letter is addressed to Rene Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom.



The letter points out that in Germany, Deutsche Telekom is quite respectful of workers’ rights to organise and views close cooperation with unions as a “pillar of successful employer policy.”



In the U.S., however, T-Mobile has engaged in persistent anti-union activity. A report by American Rights at Work, for example, found that T-Mobile in 2003 produced a manual that details how to resist a union and how to recognize and counter “early warning signals of unionizing activity.”



As members of the U.S. Congress turn up the heat on the international telecom giant, CWA President Larry Cohen participated in a press conference in Bonn, Germany and called for an end to the double standard. Cohen pointed out that contrary to T-Mobile’s anti-union efforts, “one major U.S. telecom, AT&T, has set a standard based on neutrality and recognition based on majority sign-up, and the company’s 42,000 Mobility employees have a contract and bargaining rights. T-Mobile instead chooses to ally with the worst of U.S. managers who fight collective bargaining for employees in every imaginable way. These companies use the loopholes in current U.S. labor law that support and permit anti-union campaigning by management.”