AT LAST Friday’s annual meeting of T-Mobile US Inc. in Bellevue, Washington, east of Seattle, shareholders voted on a proposal urging the T-Mobile board of directors to disclose how it assesses human rights risks in its operations and supply chain.
The human rights shareholder proposal was presented by the Marco Consulting Group, a Chicago-based registered investment adviser, and backed by the AFL-CIO and the Communications Workers of America (CWA). But the proposal was not supported by T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom, which owns 67% of T-Mobile’s outstanding shares, and it failed.
The human rights shareholder proposal urged T-Mobile’s board to report on its compliance with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, also commonly known as the ‘Ruggie Principles.’
Deutsche Telekom has endorsed the Ruggie Principles, but it did not support similar disclosure for its US subsidiary.
Brandon Rees, deputy director of the AFL-CIO Office of Investment, said: ‘Human rights violations can have detrimental effects on a company’s reputation and its brand name. ‘Ensuring that T-Mobile complies with human rights is good for T-Mobile’s business and its shareholders.’ The proposal asked T-Mobile to report on human rights risks in its own operations and in its supply chain.
For example, the General Counsel of the National Labour Relations Board issued a complaint alleging that T-Mobile violated its employees’ rights under federal labour law, including the right to form and join unions. T-Mobile also is exposed to human rights risks in its mobile phone supply chain and overseas call centres, the AFL-CIO noted.
The Communications Workers of America (CWA) pointed out in a new article that T-Mobile CEO John Legere made $29 million after one year in his position, the equivalent of the combined salaries of 2,000 T-Mobile call centre workers. A full-time minimum wage employee would have to work 580 hours to equal one hour of pay for the CEO.
Legere is far from the only example. As AFL-CIO’s Executive PayWatch shows, American CEOs averaged $11.7 million in compensation in 2013, 331 times the $35,293 the average worker made.
The CWA article last Friday said: ‘Yesterday Amber Diaz, a former T-Mobile US employee who was unjustly fired for exercising her rights to organise a union, stood up and asked a question that’s been on the minds of so many of her co-workers: “How can T-Mobile pay its CEO millions of dollars, while its call centre workers earn so little they are forced to rely on government assistance?”
‘Diaz boldly stepped up to the microphone at the company’s annual 2014 shareholders meeting to point out that last year T-Mobile CEO John Legere raked in $29 million, after just one year in the position. That’s the equivalent of the combined pay of about 2,000 T-Mobile call centre workers. But Timotheus Höttges, CEO of T-Mobile’s parent company Deutsche Telekom, retorted that Legere’s pay is competitive and even low by industry standards – sidestepping the fact that CEO pay is out of control.
‘It’s outrageous that a full-time minimum wage employee would have to work 580 hours just to equal a single hour of Legere’s pay. A single hour! American CEOs pocketed, on average, $11.7 million in 2013, according to the 2014 AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch. Compare that to what an average worker earned: $35,293. That means CEOs were paid 331 times as much as an average worker.
‘It was the very first time that the median pay package for a CEO crossed the $10 million mark. At the same time, the divide between workers’ pay and productivity continues to escalate. From 1973 to 2011, worker productivity grew 80.4 per cent, while the inflation-adjusted median hourly compensation for those workers grew just one-eighth of that amount, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Workers are a big part of why T-Mobile is profitable and grabbing an epic share of the wireless market. Isn’t it time employees share in that success?’
• The US economy added 217,000 new jobs in May, a drop from April’s 288,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 6.3%, according to figures released on Friday morning by the US Bureau of Labour Statistics. Over the past year, the number of jobless workers has decreased by 1.9 million and the unemployment rate has fallen from 7.5%.
The AFL-CIO warned: ‘While the improved jobs numbers over the past several months show the economy is beginning to recover, job growth is still not robust enough to provide jobs for the millions who remain out of work or to boost wages for most Americans.’
AFL-CIO chief economist William Spriggs said: ‘While payroll employment returned to its pre-Great Recession level of January 2008, public-sector employment continues losing jobs, especially local public education. This drag in the public sector is a reminder of the need to increase public investment in hiring back teachers and rebuilding our sewers, roads and transportation systems.
‘The share of Americans who are employed remains stuck below 59%, well below the 63.3% peak in March 2007 and 64.7% in April 2000. That difference represents the multi-million job gap needed. Wages have grown 2.1% over the year, just about even with inflation; little catch-up for the middle class. The minimum wage is now below 30% of the average wage, a record low; a reminder of the need to raise the minimum wage.’
He added that the real measure of a healthy labour market is wages that rise with productivity, and that is not happening. The number of long-term unemployed people (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) showed little change at 3.4 million jobless workers.
The AFL-CIO complained: ‘While the number of long-term unemployed workers has dropped by 979,000 in the past year, long-term joblessness continues to plague the economy, House Republicans continue to refuse to allow a vote on the extension of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) benefits programme that was approved by a bipartisan Senate majority. House Republicans allowed emergency help for jobless workers to expire at the end of last year. So far, more than 3 million jobless workers have lost benefits and that number continues to rise.’
Last month’s biggest job gains were in professional and business services (55,000, mostly in employment services), health care (55,000), food services (32,000) and transportation and warehousing (16,000). Employment in other major industries, manufacturing, retail trade, wholesale trade, financial activities, mining and government, changed little over the month.
Unemployment rates for the major worker groups: adult men (5.9%), adult women (5.7%), whites (5.4%) and blacks (11.5%) showed little or no change. The jobless rate for Latinos rose to 7.7% from April’s 7.3%. The unemployment rate for adult black women fell to 10.0%, its lowest since January 2008.
