A few days ago I reported on the Justice Department filing suit to block the merger of AT&T with T-Mobile, but there is more news about how much AT&T has been lying about the benefits of their proposed merger.
In order to promote the merger, AT&T announced that they would be moving 5,000 call center jobs back to the USA, saying “At a time when many Americans are struggling and our economy faces significant challenges, we’re pleased that the T-Mobile merger allows us to bring 5,000 jobs back to the United States and significantly increase our investment here.”
Of course, this was just a carrot offered to try to sell the merger. According to the Wall Street Journal, as recently as March AT&T was bragging to their investors that the merger would save tens of billions of dollars in the first four years by eliminating redundant job. In fact, around 20,000 T-Mobile’s employees would likely lose their jobs. For those of us that still know how to do simply math, that means that the merger would result in 15,000 people losing their jobs.
And as the WSJ points out, there is no reason AT&T (or T-Mobile or any other company with call center jobs) couldn’t move those jobs back to the US at any time. Why would they need a merger to get them to do right by American workers?
AT&T also tried to sell the merger by saying that they would increase capital spending by $8 billion. But without the merger, the two companies would have spent $18 billion, so again the net result of the merger is a reduction of $10 billion in capital spending.
It just seems like some corporations have such little regard for us that they think they can just say “blah blah blah jobs blah blah” and we will let them do whatever they want to screw us over.
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I went on the Internet in 1995 with AT&T. I had five hours a month. A tech suggested I upgrade Internet Explorer which I did at the speed computers ran in those days-using up my five hours. “I’m not going to have to pay for this am I?” “Certainly,” Tech said. “Either you give me the time for the upgrade or get me off your servive.” He had me off in five minutes. That was a Sunday. I was on with my telephone company by 8 the next morning. Just like that. I now pay less than $50 a month for phone and Internet. The USOpen tennis has almost 1/2 its matches absolutely live this year on the Internet. No commercials. I have not had a nice thing to say about rapacious AT&T since.
A company lying? Say it aint so!