T-Mobile’s ‘T-Voice’ Program Violates Labor Law, Court Agrees

T-Mobile USA Inc. likely will have to disband its nationwide program for collecting complaints about work from its customer service representatives, after a federal appeals court ruled 2-1 that the National Labor Relations Board had sufficient legal backing for such an order.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday affirmed the NLRB’s decision that the company’s T-Voice program qualified as a labor organization and that it was unlawfully dominated and assisted by T-Mobile.

The appeals court ruling puts judicial force behind the NLRB’s order to dissolve T-Voice and may end a nearly eight-year legal dispute.

T-Mobile established T-Voice in 2015, staffing it with customer service representatives from its call centers. The Communications Workers of America, which has attempted to organize T-Mobile customer service reps for years, filed a charge with the NLRB in 2016 challenging T-Voice’s existence.

Second Time at Court

An NLRB administrative law judge ruled against T-Mobile in 2017, holding that the company violated a provision of the National Labor Relations Act that prevents employers from using quasi-unions controlled by management to drain support for independent labor organizing.

But the board—which was controlled by Republicans at the time—overturned that decision, finding in 2019 that the program was lawful and functioned as a “suggestion box” rather than an organization that submitted group proposals to management.

But the D.C. Circuit vacated the Trump-era decision in 2021, remanding the case for more explanation of what evidence can show an organization made a group proposal.

The NLRB then ruled 2-1 that T-Voice acted in a representative capacity, and so the company’s control of the program violated the NLRA. To the extent an organization is dealing with management, group proposals equate to proposals made to management by group members acting as employee representatives, the board said in 2022.

The sole Republican member on the NLRB panel dissented, saying there weren’t enough instances of T-Voice making proposals to management that would qualify as a pattern or practice that would violate the law.

In Friday’s ruling, the D.C. Circuit panel majority rejected T-Mobile’s arguments against the NLRB’s revised approach to the group proposals element for deciding whether an organization is dealing with management.

Case Law Lacking

T-Mobile asserted that employee organizations must take some formal action on members’ proposals before group dealing can be established. To support that view, the company cited NLRB rulings involving groups that took additional action to adopt proposals made to management.

“T-Mobile’s description of those cases is accurate,” Judge Brad Garcia wrote for the majority. “But that fact is no stand-in for what T-Mobile really needs: a Board decision stating that such action is required for a group of representative employees to qualify as a statutory labor organization. As we have explained, there is no such case.”

Garcia, a Biden appointee, was joined in the majority by Judge Sri Srinivasan, an Obama appointee. The majority also turned aside several other arguments that T-Mobile made.

Judge Raymond Randolph, a George H.W. Bush appointee, filed a one-sentence dissent saying he disagrees with the ruling for the same reason as the dissenting Republican board member in the NLRB’s 2022 ruling.

T-Mobile’s attorney, Mark Harris of Proskauer Rose LLP, and NLRB spokesperson Kayla Blado declined to comment.

The case is T-Mobile USA, Inc. v. NLRB, D.C. Cir., No. 22-1310, 1/12/24.