Record Shows Jobs Would Be Lost If T-Mobile is Combined with MetroPCS, CWA Says
Documents submitted to the FCC “contradict the Applicants’ initial public assertions” that a combination of T-Mobile and MetroPCS won’t mean job losses, the Communications Workers of America said in a filing Monday at the FCC. CWA’s arguments are based on information submitted by T-Mobile and MetroPCS that has not been released publicly, and the filing was heavily redacted. The letter was posted by the FCC Tuesday. T-Mobile said it plans to explain why CWA’s assertions don’t add up.
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The two carriers’ concessions came after the FCC forced them to “substantiate their claims” that the deal could mean more jobs rather than less, CWA said (http://bit.ly/YulCDl). “The Applicants admitted that actually there will be ‘job reductions’ -- but now attempt to characterize those job losses as a ‘relatively small number.'” CWA said it had predicted “the ’synergies’ touted by the Applicants are indeed euphemisms for firing workers, and CWA believes the numbers reflected in those documents are significant, not ’small.'” The filing was made by Monica Desai of Patton Boggs, former chief of the FCC Media and Consumer and Governmental Affairs bureaus.
CWA has been among the strongest critics of Deutsche Telekom’s plan to buy MetroPCS and fold it into T-Mobile. Last year, CWA asked the FCC to impose no job loss provisions on the merger as a condition of approval (CD Nov 28 p5).
T-Mobile fired back. “The combination of T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS will create a stronger carrier, well situated to compete effectively against the other nationwide carriers and better positioned as the country’s leading value carrier,” a T-Mobile spokesman said. “T-Mobile will respond shortly at the FCC to the mischaracterizations and false conclusions of the Communications Workers of America.” Tuesday was day 130 of the FCC’s unofficial 180-day timeline for evaluating the merger.
Meanwhile, Ed Black, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, filed a letter in support of the transaction. “The combination of T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS will create a stronger carrier, better positioned to compete effectively against the juggernaut that is Verizon and AT&T, which dominates the U.S. marketplace,” Block said (http://bit.ly/10b9oTY). “This transaction, by facilitating T-Mobile deployment of LTE in 2013 can actually help prevent duopoly.”