International Human Rights Day and Deutsche Telekom

On Saturday December 10, the world celebrated Human Rights Day. The UN chose that day in 1950 to commemorate the proclamation and adoption on December 10, 1948, of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

It is sobering to reflect on how far the world has come in 63 years and how much more can be done to realize the ideals of the UN Declaration.

We believe Deutsche Telekom has some work to do to celebrate December 10 with a clean conscience. We have two items to share that suggest the company’s aggressive union avoidance in the United States – at the wholly-owned subsidiary T-Mobile USA – leaves the company open to considerable risk to brand and reputation. DT appears to have inadequate protocols in place to manage or monitor the conduct of local subsidiaries consistent with its CSR commitments.

On September 15, the German television program Monitor aired an 8-minute segment on Deutsche Telekom’s union avoidance. (The video can be found here -- click on the CC at the lower right corner of the video play to see English captions.) The program was viewed by over 3 million households in Germany on the day of the airing and countless numbers since.

The Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) released a report on December 9 that put into question Deutsche Telekom’s Corporate Social Responsibility record. It found that there was very little evidence for DT’s claims in its 2011 Corporate Responsibility report that it met the highest reporting standards (level A+) of the Global Reporting Initiative protocols. In other words, while the company claimed to meet GRI standards, it failed to comply for the most part. This conclusion does not surprise T-Mobile workers in the United States who face the reality of the company’s union avoidance tactics. It also suggests that the façade of corporate citizenship erected by Deutsche Telekom has not been verified.

The TUAC report was released by both UNI Global Union and the AFL-CIO. Click here for the AFL-CIO release and here for the UNI release.

Deutsche Telekom and TUAC exchanged letters about the assessment. Click here for the TUAC response in February 2012.

Deutsche Telekom’s 2010/2011 Corporate Social Responsibility Report can be found here.