Something Else To Be Considered Before AT&T Swallows T-Mobile

How can employment implications not be part of what’s considered in mergers and acquisitions? How will more people out-of-work benefit our nation?

I am an AT&T landline and cell subscriber. I am not a fan of AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile. Like the Department of Justice I think

the proposed $39 billion transaction would substantially lessen competition for mobile wireless telecommunications services across the United States, resulting in higher prices, poorer quality services, fewer choices and fewer innovative products for the millions of American consumers who rely on mobile wireless services in their everyday lives.

There’s another problem I see. It’s one that’s not looked at by the government when mergers and acquisitions are proposed. How many jobs will be lost?

No one expects the new(er) AT&T to absorb all of T-Mobile’s employees. These out-of-work casualties will provide additional savings/profit to AT&T, but at the expense of the rest of us who will now have to provide benefits and services to them.

How can employment implications not be part of what’s considered in mergers and acquisitions? How will more people out-of-work benefit our nation?

6 thoughts on “Something Else To Be Considered Before AT&T Swallows T-Mobile”

  1. Government for the corporations, by the corporations. Congress, the POTUS, and the DC Machine never saw a corporate deal that they didn’t like. Of course, they have destroyed the economy in the meantime, hooked into the World’s Largest Source of Corporate Welfare (TM), and got their pawns in DC to give them great tax relief wherein their effective tax rate is nowhere near the 35% nominal rate quoted in the media.

    And of course there is the corporate media. The great enabler. The rotting corpse of the 4th Estate that tries to pass itself off as journalism today. Destroyed by the profiteers.

    The Gordon Geckos of the world rule the roost. Now it’s just a matter of how much Americans will take before they freak out, or choose the dark path of confusion and self-loathing typified by the Tea Party. Scary.

  2. I’m no expert on the situation but I saw something about how TMobile uses overseas call centers (customer service I guess) and AT&T was going to be bringing those back to the US creating 9,000 jobs. I would guess that the call center jobs are some of the poorer paying positions though and I’m sure they will also cut duplicate higher-paying positions.

  3. There in lies the rub. In the current corporate culture, or even for several years past at this point, people are nothing but a disposable commodity to ‘the powers that be.’ It’s most disheartening when you hear an announcement about hundreds of company layoffs followed by news on Wall Street that the CEO is getting a substantial raise for ‘cutting costs.’

    I worked for a so-called ‘regional bank’ for four years and as they got caught up in the merger-and-acquisition craze, it definitely became apparent that the larger they got, the less important people got. I now tell everyone that if they think their bank treats them poorly, imagine how poorly they treat their employees.

    Happy employees = happy customers. Simple logic. When employees gain more responsibilities due to staffing losses (which management will label as ‘new opportunities’) and live in fear of losing their jobs, guess what, they are no longer happy employees…understandably so. Management at this point decides that, rather correcting their policies for employees, they need to fire more employees. And firing more employees just creates even more animosity among the rest of the employees. So, more firing. So on and so forth.

    At no point does management take a look at themselves and think ‘hmm…maybe we’re doing something wrong.’ They just keep thinking ‘hmm…I get paid a truckload of money, I MUST be doing everything right.’ It’s time for responsible corporate reform to give power & stability back to the employees. Let’s cut some corporate paychecks and teach management that people are not commodities.

  4. I disagree with Sally’s comment- Corporations aren’t clueless on such matters, they know EXACTLY what they’re doing, and know that they will eliminate positions to maximize profit. It’s all about how much more money they can make, not about the everyday consumer, or the people that have put out of work.

  5. Paul –

    Our laws make it perfectly clear that’s the only thing they’re allowed to do!

    From http://business-law.lawyers.com/small-business-law/Fiduciary-Responsibilities-Corporations.html: Directors must act in the best interests of the corporation and its members or stockholders. More specifically, the duty to act in good faith prohibits members of the board of directors from:

    Failing to act in the face of a known duty to act
    Acting in a manner unrelated to a pursuit of the corporation’s best interest
    Maintaining a sustained or systematic failure to provide oversight

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