T-Mobile plans 5,000 layoffs, 3 years after pitching Sprint merger as job-creator

When T-Mobile was seeking Congressional approval to merge with Sprint, then-CEO John Legere made a promise.

“This merger will be a tremendous jobs creator at New T-Mobile and across our county,” he said to a House committee. “Our merger will be jobs-positive from day one and going forward.”

Specifically, Legere committed to adding 11,000 jobs by 2024.

Skeptics saw through the refrain, repeated for months as T-Mobile made its case to regulators. After all, mergers create duplication by nature; some jobs become redundant. How could the combined company avoid making cuts?

It doesn’t appear the New T-Mobile could. The company said Thursday that nearly 5,000 jobs — about 7% of the workforce — will be eliminated in the coming weeks.

It’s the latest in a series of layoffs T-Mobile has carried out over the past few years. An investigation by GeekWire earlier this year found T-Mobile had about 9,000 fewer employees than the combined headcount of the two companies before the merger. That was before the 5,000 cuts announced today.

“They just wanted to get the merger done and they were going to say whatever they needed to say in order to get it done,” said a former T-Mobile employee who was laid off earlier this month. She spoke on the condition of anonymity so her comments won’t impact her search for a new job.

“I feel like they didn't think that the merger would go through if they were honest,” she said.

T-Mobile did not respond to KUOW's request for an interview, or to a list of questions by the time of publishing.

The latest round of layoffs will primarily be in corporate and technology roles and shouldn’t affect retail positions, according to a filing with the SEC. T-Mobile didn’t say where jobs would be eliminated, but the company’s corporate headquarters is in Bellevue, Wash.

“What it takes to attract and retain customers is materially more expensive than it was just a few quarters ago,” T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said in a memo to employees.

“It is clear that doing everything we are doing and just doing it faster is not enough to deliver on these changing customer expectations going forward,” he added.

Regulators approved T-Mobile’s merger with Sprint in 2019, swayed by the companies’ promise to expand coverage in rural America and create jobs.