FCC Blamed for T-Mobile Job Cuts
AT&T criticized the FCC for 1,900 call center layoffs at T-Mobile USA, saying the jobs would have been saved if the agency had approved the carriers’ deal to combine. T-Mobile has already re-emerged as a “vibrant competitor” in the short period since the deal collapsed, the FCC said. T-Mobile is closing seven call centers in three months and plans additional restructuring, the carrier said late Thursday. “It should be obvious that AT&T is speaking for themselves and not for T-Mobile,” T-Mobile USA Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Tom Sugrue said. “These decisions, while difficult, are about optimizing our business to better compete for the future."
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AT&T had predicted that if the acquisition failed, T-Mobile would be forced into major layoffs, Jim Cicconi, senior executive vice president, said Friday. He said AT&T had promised to preserve the same call centers and jobs if the deal was approved. At the time, the FCC rejected AT&T’s “pledges and predictions” and questioned the company’s “credibility” in “an aggressive and adamant way,” he said. “Rarely are a regulatory agency’s predictive judgments proven so wrong so fast.” The “lesson” here is that the FCC isn’t “omniscient” even though it may consider itself an expert agency on telecom, Cicconi said. When the agency “ventures far afield from technical issues, and into judgments about employment or predictions about business decisions, it has often been wildly wrong,” he said. “The price of a bad decision is too often paid by someone else."
The result of the FCC’s decision “put good jobs at the bottom of the FCC’s priorities,” CWA will continue to work with T-Mobile USA workers who want union representation, it said. The group urged the company to talk with CWA to find solutions that ensure the interests of the company and employees. “The bottom line is that AT&T’s proposal to acquire a major competitor was unprecedented in scope,” an FCC spokesman said. Additionally, AT&T’s own confidential documents showed that the merger would have resulted in significant job losses, he said.
the Communications Workers of America said.T-Mobile has 3,300 employees at the seven affected facilities. The company will start hiring immediately at the remaining 17 call centers and expects to fill up to 1,400 positions at them, the company said. Call centers scheduled for closure include: Allentown, Pa.; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Frisco and Brownsville, Texas; Lenexa, Kan.; Thornton, Colo., and Redmond, Ore. Additionally, T-Mobile will restructure other parts of the business by the end of Q2, it said. Most changes will be announced by the end of May, a spokeswoman said, and won’t affect customer service representatives in the 17 remaining call centers, technicians in engineering and front line employees in T-Mobile’s corporate owned stores, she said.