The Communications Workers of America (CWA) union said on Tuesday that AT&T’s planned $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA will create 96,000 additional jobs in the United States and bring another 5,000 others back from overseas. The union said Sprint and other opponents of the merger are “inappropriately” implying that the deal will actually result in job cuts and says such conclusions, which were reached in a Sprint-commissioned study, are the result of “sloppy research and the inability to distinguish between the change in the number of wireline and wireless jobs.” Read on for more.
The Communications Workers of America also said that it has experience in ensuring AT&T’s promises are kept, and has done so following the purchase of Centennial and Dobson, and after the AT&T/Cingular merger. “The AT&T/T-Mobile merger will create, save or retain more U.S. jobs than a stand-alone T-Mobile which is already on a downward spiral … A Sprint/T-Mobile merger would have been a disaster in terms of technology and finances, and would lead to a decline in U.S. jobs,” the report says.
In October, the FCC wrote a letter to AT&T stating that the carrier failed to provide enough information explaining how it plans to create jobs. AT&T replied and said it intends to respond fully to the FCC’s request. The CWA sent the full 12-page report on the benefits of the merger to the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday.
