AT&T, rivals spar over deal's jobs impact

AT&T has claimed its acquisition of T-Mobile would create up to 96,000 jobs, and it has pledged not to eliminate thousands more — an argument it hopes will put political pressure on regulators still deciding the fate of the deal. Foes of the deal, including Sprint and public interest groups, say the deal will actually kill jobs — and they’re demanding that TV stations stop airing commercials in which AT&T says otherwise.

The furor over the jobs numbers bubbled up this week with a flurry of blog posts, reports, press conferences and letters to the Federal communications Commission, which is weighing whether the deal is in the public interest. AT&T bases its job figures on a report by the Economic Policy Institute, which estimates that the deal — and the additional $8 billion AT&T says it will invest in its network to reach 97 percent of the U.S. population — will create between 55,000 and 96,000 jobs over seven years. AT&T has also promised to move 5,000 call center jobs back to the United States from overseas if the deal is approved, and said no one employed by AT&T and T-Mobile at the time of the deal would lose their jobs. AT&T also pledged to eliminate jobs at out-sourcing locations before reducing U.S.-based jobs. Sprint and public interest groups including Public Knowledge and Media Access Project say the 96,000 jobs claim is bogus.

Sprint commissioned its own economic study showing the merger will actually result in “many thousands of lost jobs.” While AT&T says it will invest an additional $8 billion, the study points out that the company has told Wall Street that the merger will result in a $10 billion net reduction in reduced capital spending. And the study says AT&T has eliminated thousands of jobs during previous mergers, so there’s no reason to expect the company to behave differently this time. Labor economist John Neumark, who wrote the report, estimated that the merger would end up destroying between 34,000 and 60,000 jobs as a result of finding new “efficiencies” within the companies.