Multinational corporations headquartered in Europe, Japan, Korea, Brazil and other countries employ workers, operate facilities and provide services here in the United States. In their home countries, many have a long tradition of collective bargaining and social dialogue with their national unions, based on respect for fundamental worker rights. While not without conflict, these bargaining partnerships have fostered productive and prosperous companies, economically stable workforces, and stronger national democracies.
Yet many multinationals do not bring these best practices from their home countries when they expand into the United States and other countries. Instead, they adopt the worst practices of their host countries: disrespect for workers, union-busting tactics, fear and intimidation for workers who speak up, and firings and reprisals when they seek to join a union. Instead of taking the high road, these multinational corporations adapt to the host country’s low road model for worker rights.
This is exactly what German multinational corporation Deutsche Telekom did when it expanded its wireless and call center operations into the United States with its wholly owned subsidiary T-Mobile USA. American workers face anti-union behavior by Deutsche Telekom that is unprecedented in Germany. With its entry into the United States, T-Mobile USA launched an aggressive and comprehensive “union avoidance” strategy. T-Mobile USA workers deserve better from a company with a proven record of respectful labor relations in Germany. For that reason, CWA and its German counterpart ver.di joined together to create the transnational union TU that jointly represents the interests of German and US workers.
In January 2011, representatives of Global Union Federations (GUFs), the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and national trade union centers from around the world came together in Washington, D.C. to consider potential cases for coordinated action. The cases discussed were chosen from the Human Rights Watch Report “A Strange Case: Violations of Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States by European Multinational Corporations.” The meeting examined experiences of workers employed by multinationals outside their headquarter countries when they attempted to exercise their rights to organize and bargain. After discussion of several potential campaigns, meeting participants supported the development of a new organizing model that would focus global resources on supporting workers in their campaign for workers’ rights at Deutsche Telekom/T-Mobile USA. While not the first international campaign, this is the first time the global labor movement in its entirety has come together to work in concert and to demand that a global corporation uphold standards of respect for workers and decent work principles wherever it operates.
This recommendation was formalized by statements adopted by the Council of Global Unions and the ITUC General Council. This new initiative will focus the combined support and commitment of the world’s labor movement on winning rights for workers at Deutsche Telekom around the world, including at T-Mobile USA. The goal will be to initiate successive multi-national corporate campaigns as they emerge and develop.
The global organizing model brings together unions from the supply chain of the multinational corporation. Based on careful research and understanding of the reach of the company, but centered on the workers involved along many points of the global operations, the model will utilize unprecedented coordination and communications to link together the daily struggles of workers to build their unions through direct engagement with the multinational corporations, through international labor and human rights bodies, through shareholder activism, and through engagement with national governmental authorities.
We commend the ITUC and the Council of Global Unions for their commitment to global organizing. We join today the global labor movement in endorsing the first of many global campaigns and working with the Communications Workers of America, the TU members, and the T-Mobile USA workers to win their basic labor rights, gain a voice on the job, and bargain for a better life.