"T-Mobile Girl" Says "Bring Jobs Home"

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)If T-Mobile customers in downtown Washington DC were surprised to see the leather-clad “T-Mobile Girl” roar up on a motorcycle outside the 11th and E Street store yesterday, they were even more surprised to find her passing out stickers urging the telecom giant to “Bring Jobs Home.” The noontime action was one of dozens that have been staged around the country to draw attention to the ongoing off-shoring of U.S. jobs, in this case the closing of seven T-Mobile call centers and resulting elimination of 3,300 jobs. While the issue has become a red-hot issue in the Presidential campaign, Congress has failed to act, with House Republicans on Tuesday blocking a vote on the Bring Jobs Home Act (H.R.5542). Meanwhile, according to the AFL-CIO’s “Bring Jobs Home” campaign, more than 50,000 manufacturing facilities have closed in the last decade, 6 million manufacturing jobs have been wiped out and the U.S. trade deficit continues to grow while the largest U.S. non-financial corporations sat on a record $1 trillion in cash instead of using it to create jobs. Passersby yesterday took fliers about this issue and texted their concern to Rene Obermann, CEO of T-Mobile’s parent company, while CWA’s Tony Daley and “T-Mobile Girl” (Metro Council Assistant Mobilizer Julia Kann) took the message inside to the store manager, asking T-Mobile to stop off-shoring jobs, keep the call centers open, and respect its workers’ fundamental labor rights to participate in a union and seek collective bargaining. - report/photo by Chris Garlock