It’s a safe bet that T‑Mobile’s par­ent com­pa­ny, Deutsche Telekom, won’t have much to say in response to the sec­ond let­ter either. But if politi­cians are begin­ning to pay atten­tion to T‑Mobile employ­ees, it’s because work­ers have been orga­niz­ing towards improved work­ing con­di­tions for years.

Last month, 20 Demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers wrote a let­ter to T‑Mobile’s par­ent com­pa­ny in Ger­many express­ing their con­cern over the treat­ment of T‑Mobile work­ers in the Unit­ed States. The sharply-word­ed let­ter explained that this was not their first attempt to get answers from the com­pa­ny: ​“Your July 14 th response to the let­ter that we sent you on June 29 th seemed to indi­cate that you are not tak­ing this issue seri­ous­ly, so we were seek­ing addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about your famil­iar­i­ty with the Amer­i­can legal issues at stake with your pol­i­tics and prac­tices regard­ing labor complaints.”

At the fore­front of the strug­gle is the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers of Amer­i­ca (CWA), which has been fight­ing to orga­nize employ­ees since Deutsche Telekom bought the com­pa­ny in 2001. In 2005, CWA began a part­ner­ship with ver.di, the union which rep­re­sents Deutsche Telekom work­ers in Ger­many. CWA says there is a sharp dis­tinc­tion between the lives of the corporation’s Ger­man work­ers and the real­i­ty of its U.S. employees.

“In Ger­many, Deutsche Telekom employ­ees enjoy a strong labor-man­age­ment part­ner­ship,” says CWA’s Kendra Marr Chaikind.

In fact, the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion giant’s own social char­ter rec­og­nizes the ​‘fun­da­men­tal right’ to col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, declar­ing itself ​‘in favor of coop­er­at­ing with legit­i­mate demo­c­ra­t­ic employ­ee rep­re­sen­ta­tions in an open and trust­ing man­ner. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Ger­man own­er­ship did not change the union-bust­ing tac­tics of T‑Mobile’s man­age­ment. On this side of the Atlantic, U.S. man­age­ment rou­tine­ly uses intim­i­da­tion and harass­ment to crush work­ers’ basic right to form a union and bargain.

The union-bust­ing tac­tics that Chaikind alleges are coor­di­nat­ed from T‑Mobile’s cor­po­rate head­quar­ters in Belle­vue, Wash­ing­ton. Dur­ing a 2014 tri­al in Kansas, the com­pa­ny admit­ted that it had devel­oped a sys­tem to mon­i­tor any poten­tial union activ­i­ty and a response team to stamp out any spark of poten­tial union­iza­tion. The region­al NLRB in Albu­querque dis­cov­ered four instances in which T‑Mobile man­agers had ille­gal­ly dis­cour­aged union activ­i­ty. In a rare move, the NLRB con­sol­i­dat­ed these and oth­er cas­es in an effort to deter­mine whether the com­pa­ny was engag­ing in sys­temic, ille­gal practices.

“They had peo­ple watch­ing you as you went in and out,” T‑Mobile employ­ee Debra-Diane McDon­nell of Red­mond, Ore­gon, told Unit­ed Stu­dents Against Sweat­shops in a tes­ti­mo­ni­al . ​“They were watch­ing the secu­ri­ty cam­era tapes, and they were watch­ing very much who was going direct­ly to their car and who was walk­ing over there to talk to the union rep­re­sen­ta­tives. You were on edge because you knew that you didn’t dare [speak to the union], at least not with­in any visu­al shot of the building.”

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Josh Cole­man worked at a T‑Mobile call cen­ter for three and a half years and engaged in union activ­i­ty. When a T‑Mobile vice pres­i­dent spot­ted him wear­ing a pro-union t‑shirt, the com­pa­ny rescind­ed a free trip he had won as a result of impres­sive job per­for­mance. Even­tu­al­ly, the com­pa­ny sacked him for alleged­ly vio­lat­ing a pol­i­cy he says no one had heard of, then shred­ded the parts of his note­book which con­cerned his organizing.

In March, an NLRB judge ruled that many of T‑Mobile’s anti-union poli­cies are ille­gal. The case had com­piled a num­ber of spe­cif­ic work­er com­plaints through­out the coun­try and Admin­is­tra­tive Law Judge Chris­tine Dib­ble deter­mined that 11 of the 13 chal­lenged poli­cies were unlaw­ful. While T‑Mobile seem­ing­ly shrugged off the rul­ing and insist­ed it was mere­ly a ​“tech­ni­cal issue in the law,” many labor advo­cates believe that the judge’s deci­sion could have far-reach­ing impli­ca­tions. CWA says the rul­ing has the abil­i­ty to impact over 40,000 work­ers. They also point out that T‑Mobile has failed to inform their employ­ees about this his­toric ruling.

T‑Mobile’s ner­vous­ness regard­ing union­iza­tion is under­stand­able. Many of their call cen­ter employ­ee work in high­ly-mon­i­tored rooms which are so stress­ful that they’ve been referred to as ​“ elec­tron­ic sweat­shops. ” In a blog post titled ​“I Used to Love My Job,” one T‑Mobile employ­ee writes, ​“The pres­sure to sell has forced an increas­ing num­ber of my co-work­ers to quit or take a stress & anx­i­ety leave.” She also writes that doc­tors in her com­mu­ni­ty have coined a term for patients who work at the com­pa­ny: ​“T‑Mobile dis­ease.” A group of T‑Mobile work­ers in Chat­tanooga even say they were forced to wear dunce caps if they were unable to meet their expect­ed numbers.

One of the most dis­turb­ing exam­ples of alleged T‑Mobile work­er abuse occurred in Maine, where a cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive filed a sex­u­al harass­ment com­plaint with her human resources depart­ment. T‑Mobile then forced her to sign a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment that barred her from talk­ing about the sit­u­a­tion with any­one. She was then told that if she men­tioned the com­plaint to any co-work­ers, she could be fired. An admin­is­tra­tive law judge recent­ly ruled that these con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ments vio­lat­ed U.S. labor law.

T‑Mobile did not respond to requests for com­ment from In These Times.

T‑Mobile employ­ees’ fight to orga­nize is coin­cid­ing with oth­er notable com­mu­ni­ca­tion work­er strug­gles through­out the coun­try. Ver­i­zon work­ers almost went on strike recent­ly over job and ben­e­fit cuts and AT&T work­ers are cur­rent­ly bar­gain­ing for bet­ter contracts.

Chaikind stress­es the impor­tance of sol­i­dar­i­ty in these strug­gles. ​“Coor­di­na­tion and coali­tion build­ing has always been an instru­men­tal part of this fight,” she says. ​“Our AT&T Mobil­i­ty work­ers have been a great resource in help­ing T‑Mobile and Ver­i­zon Wire­less work­ers get a voice on the job. … You’ll see AT&T Mobil­i­ty, T‑Mobile and Ver­i­zon Wire­less work­ers at each oth­er’s meet­ings, demon­stra­tions and more. Even though they’re all com­peti­tors, work­ers know it’s absolute­ly nec­es­sary to form a strong union­ized indus­try to stop the race-to-the-bottom.”

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers of Amer­i­ca are a spon­sor of In These Times. Spon­sors play no role in edi­to­r­i­al content.