T-Mobile Workers Blog: Trying to meet VP Brueckman - Mission Impossible?

The Real T-Mobile is very delighted to welcome a new contributor to our T-Mobile workers blog. As a former T-Mobile employee and union supporter, "Linda M." will be writing about her experiences at T-Mobile USA. In her first entry, she describes an eventful day at the Allentown T-Mobile call center. 

 As a former T-Mobile employee and a supporter of the CWA, I was honored to join with Ed Mooney, CWA District 13 Vice President; Stephen Barron, Northampton County Controller; Mike D’Amore, Allentown City Council President; and Pam Tronsor, CWA District 13 Organizing Coordinator on Tuesday, August 10, as they made an attempt to speak with Brian Brueckman, Group Vice President of Customer Service for T-Mobile USA. 

Mr. Brueckman was scheduled to speak to T-Mobile workers at the Allentown call center in a “Town Hall” meeting.  In the 6 years I was with T-Mobile, we had only one other Town Hall meeting, years ago, when Sue Nokes was VP of Customer Service. Sue spoke to us about Allentown’s conversion from Customer Care work to Technical Care work and T-Mobile’s decision to outsource a majority of the Tier 1 level technical support.

Our spirits were high yesterday as the video camera rolled and our group made its way to the front entrance.  As we expected, a security guard came out to speak with us almost as soon as we got to the top of the walkway. In the past, whenever the union would show up all cameras would be trained in their direction, so I’m positive they knew we were coming.

Despite a very polite request by Steve Barron, the guard came back out to inform us that Brian would not be able to speak with us as he was preparing for the meeting. When questioned further, he admitted that no call center leadership was willing to speak with us and that Brian wouldn’t be coming out even after the meeting was over. Steve asked that the guard relay back to leadership that he was a local elected official and this instance would be remembered and taken into consideration in any future dealings between T-Mobile and the county. 

Keep in mind, T-Mobile has to work with local counties and municipalities when they want to erect new towers to increase their footprint. 

I ask this: T-Mobile USA has taken a public stance in the past that they are not anti-union and their workers have every right to organize under the national labor laws. If this is the case, why is T-Mobile’s VP of Customer Service reluctant to speak with the CWA? If the benefits that T-Mobile offers are that much more superior to what the CWA could offer, where is the harm in allowing CWA to take 10 minutes of the meeting to explain to the workers how they could benefit by joining the union?

I remember very clearly the day several years ago when CWA first showed up at the call center. Cliff Wolfe was still the Call Center Director and I was a brand new Senior Rep. That day, emergency meetings were called in which all leadership, including Seniors, were shown a PowerPoint presentation about the dangers of the union and how the union could harm the wonderful life that we enjoy at T-Mobile. As a young woman, I had no experience with unions and was still very enthusiastic about my job within the call center, so I swallowed what we were told hook line and sinker. If we heard anyone talking about the union, we were immediately supposed to report it to management or HR.

Since that meeting, I personally never attended another meeting along those lines, most likely in my opinion due to them realizing that Seniors would be included in any collective bargaining agreement… Whoops!  However, through discussion with peers and other members of leadership, I knew those meetings were still happening, just a whole lot more hush hush.  I remember asking my boss what this top secret meeting was about on the February 2010 outlook calendar and being told after the fact that they had been reminded how to address a situation if the union was brought up, but she wouldn’t share much more information with me than that.

Tomorrow I will talk a little bit more about what happened at the Allentown call center on Tuesday and how Brian Brueckman was sent to Decision Time. 

I’ll also include some nice photos and videos for you to see. So - stick together and stick around!