T-Mobile is facing some heat after it was discovered that it has cut at least 5,000 jobs. These jobs were cut ever since its acquisition of Sprint. Prior to the merger, T-Mobile promised that it would generate new jobs “from day one”. Unfortunately, it did the opposite of that. 

In its recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), T-Mobile wrote that:

“As of December 31, 2020, we employed approximately 75,000 full-time and part-time employees, including network, retail, administrative, and customer support functions.” 

This is a number that is 5,000 less than what T-Mobile gave on different occasions. In a press release just a few weeks from its SEC filing, T-Mobile said that there are “more than 80,000 employees at the post-merger T-Mobile.” 

It’s important to note though that the government did not impose any hiring requirements as part of its acquisition. But ever since news about the merger broke, ex T-Mobile CEO John Legere continued to express how jobs would be a key part in the merger. As a matter of fact, Legere published a blog post on April 2019 entitled: “Just the Facts on Jobs: The New T-Mobile Will Create Jobs From Day One.”

The blog post read:

“New T-Mobile will have more than 11,000 additional employees on our payroll by 2024 compared to what the combined standalone companies would have.” 

Legere also claimed that the Un-Carrier would “open 600 new stores to serve rural areas and small towns, that neither T-Mobile nor Sprint serve today, directly resulting in approximately 5,000 new retail jobs.”

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) have always been doubtful of T-Mobile’s promises. “We knew that T-Mobile couldn’t be trusted to keep its promises. That’s why we pushed for enforceable commitments from T-Mobile on jobs during the merger process.”

The group encouraged regulators to take a closer look at what’s going on at T-Mobile and “get serious about protecting jobs as part of their oversight of corporate mergers.” 

In response to a publication, T-Mobile released a statement:

“We’re not backing away from our commitment on jobs. In 2020 we worked through the integration and as with any merger we addressed some redundancies, however we have continued hiring in spite of a complex pandemic environment. We currently have nearly 3,000 job openings, only a portion of which are part of our Un-Carrier Job initiative that we launched last summer to hire 5,000 more employees.”

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