T-Mobile staff start getting twitchy over Sprint merger

A letter has emerged from T-Mobile Workers United, with the union asking Deutsche Telekom executives to confirm jobs will be safe following the merger between T-Mobile US and Sprint.

According to Reuters, the union, representing around 500 employees from the telco, have seemingly decided to skip out T-Mobile US CEO John Legere and gone straight to group boss Tim Hoettges. The union is seeking assurances jobs will be safe should the merger between the two telcos survive legal challenges which are emerging.

Although there have been several assurances from Legere the merger will be a net creator of jobs, this is under the assumption growth can be achieved through the union. It might sound like a good headline, but reading into the statements, Legere is suggesting job creation will be down to synergies between the firms and a more assertive challenge to AT&T and Verizon.

However, the issue of business rationalisation has not been addressed head on. Whenever two large businesses are brought together through a merger, redundancies are unavoidable. This is a point which has not been addressed by the management teams, with senior managers simply pointing to the potential for growth.

Irrelevant as to whether there will be job creation through an aggressive network rollout or a taking the combined business into new, regional markets, there will be overlap between the two businesses. Not every lawyer, accountant or HR employee will need to be retained as the team will seek cost efficiencies during the integration process. The other thing you have to think about is the retail presence.

It won’t be in every location, but there will of course be hundreds of jobs at risk as the merged business seeks to rationalise its presence on the high street. There are going to be numerous locations where both Sprint and T-Mobile US have a physical store within minutes of each other; a choice will have to be made and job cuts will be evident. Being a net creator of jobs does not mean there will be no redundancies.

These staff are perfectly entitled to feel nervous, as the issue has not been directly addressed and any logical person would say there will be redundancies.