Right On Cue, Post-Merger T-Mobile Layoffs Begin

[ancianita]

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200303/06584444021/right-cue-post-merger-t-mobile-layoffs-begin.shtml?fbclid=IwAR3P5g1kJ7G9xJs0sos5hECs5-E8RO9mdbzAtk8zLNHT6aB6uojmTLr8Tw4

US courts and regulators recently rubber stamped the T-Mobile Sprint merger, ignoring forty years of history showing how US telecom megamergers almost always result in less competition, higher prices, and fewer jobs. Eliminating one of just four US wireless carriers is likely to result in higher prices (see: Canada or Ireland).

Wall Street analysts and unions alike predict the deal could eliminate anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 jobs, and data suggests the consolidation could result in employees across the sector making less money even if they work at other companies.


Like most mergers, T-Mobile and Sprint executives have spent a year telling people none of this will actually happen and critics were being hyperbolic.

... 4% of the journalists that uncritically hyped this merger's "synergies" will go back in a few years and scrutinize the company's pre-merger promises. And all of the think tankers and analysts that rubber stamped the deal uncritically will go mute in a few years when the price hikes and additional retail and middle management layoffs arrive, pretending they had some other, mysterious origins.

This is, apparently, just how we do things in America, a country that seems habitually incapable of learning much of anything from history or experience.

Thanks, Bill Barr and Ajit Pai, for getting us here.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200219/10593043947/ny-ag-gives-up-wont-appeal-t-mobile-merger-ruling.shtml

[msongs]

1. "right on cue" from what? nt

[we can do it]

2. Happens every merger I guess.

[Wellstone ruled]

3. Have to say,

the Lay Off Sign was posted on the walls of Sprint twenty years ago. As one of my Business Accounts,never saw such a Cluster. Really felt sorry for anyone who was a Worker Bee in those Offices. Seems like they bounced from one Credit Crisis to another in the fifteen years I called on them.

Always firing managers when they could not meet some really stupid goals and turn around and Hire someone from a totally unrelated Industry.

The Original Worker cuts were expected to be 60k or more before the end of the year.

[customerserviceguy]

4. Whatever the executives tell you

Believe the opposite.

I had a good job in 2008 when my company merged with a competitor. The CEO even went around, shaking hands and telling us that we'd still have jobs. Two months later, we were informed that our office was being shut down. Even with twelve letters of recommendation from the sales staff that I served (two of them were from sales managers) I couldn't get a job with a surviving office of the company in the next state.

Fortunately, before the axe came, I was able to get a part-time job with a utility, that became full time about a year and a half later.

Lying weasel probably got a bonus for closing our office.

[gratuitous]

5. I disagree with the writer's conclusion

Americans have learned over the years that mergers mean less competition, higher prices, and laid-off workers. But the ability of individual citizens to do anything about it is practically nil. We have to depend on the structure of the government to protect citizens from the cruelty of the oligarchs. Under Donald Trump, that aegis is all but gone. Instead of being a watchdog (however somnambulant), government is now the facilitator and willing unpaid partner for the worst that corporations can dish out to the public.

The journalists and analysts who cheered on this merger knew what was going to happen, but it's not in their interests or their boss's interests to say anything bad about it. The deal will work out poorly, as everyone knows it would, and the next proposed merger will be welcomed with the same enthusiasm, because the cheerleaders and their masters stand to benefit again from the consolidation of wealth.

[Initech]

6. And I wonder what kind of bonuses their executives are going to get?

[TheBlackAdder]

7. They tell employees "Nothing will change. It will be business as usual." Yep, business as usual.

.

Everyone knew this shit was going to happen, because it's usual business practice.

.