The Verdi services union is going on the offensive again denouncing the "primary antiunion" attitude of T-Mobile USA's management since the company was created in 2001. Based on a recent internal report drawn up by Verdi and its American counterpart, the Communication Workers of America (CWA), Lothar Schröder, member of Verdi's board and VP of Deutsche Telekom's supervisory board, is accusing T-Mobile of treating "its employees with brutal psychological terror" in these units. He mentioned the extreme example of call center employees having to wear a dunce cap for hours to demonstrate their alleged failure when they were not able to meet their numbers. The key criticism concerns the maneuvers used to keep employees from joining a union. Deutsche Telekom is denying everything and accusing Verdi of trying to be sensationalist drawing from a few isolated slip-ups. (Ref. 120678)
Unions held back since 2001. Since T-Mobile came to the US, about 10 years ago, the CWA and Verdi have been trying to introduce union representation in different units belonging to the company, which claims to be the 4th mobile phone company in the US. In US law, 50 percent of employees in a unit have to vote yes for a union to be set up. So far, at T-Mobile, only one unit with 15 people has succeeded – the company employs over 30,000 people. Lothar Schröder, back from a one-month tour in
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