T-Mobile Employees Speak Out Against Vaccine Mandate to Fire Hundreds of Unvaccinated Workers By April 2

Despite a Supreme Court ruling shutting down President Joe Biden’s attempt to allow the Federal government to force vaccine mandates on private businesses, some private companies can still choose to mandate vaccinations from workers. One such business is T-Mobile, who will terminate most unvaccinated employees by April 2. Many reached out to relay their anger, concerns, and overall sentiments on the behind-the-scenes actions taken by T-Mobile.

According to emails and T-Mobile employee documentation leaked to me from a current employee who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, the company has also denied most exemptions. They reportedly also did not inform employees of the two-tiered deadlines until this past January 28, 2022 via email. If they do not receive the first dose of vaccination by February 21, 2022, they will be forced to go into unpaid leave until they can prove to be fully vaccinated by the final April deadline. Once vaccinated they receive what the company calls a “Magenta Pass,” and even employees working in mostly “remote” positions will need it. The employee also told me that because she was afraid of losing her job, she got the first vaccine but still did not want to be forced to get the second. Most of these employees she said, were considered “essential” during the pandemic and are now at risk of losing their livelihoods.

T-Mobile’s employee exemptions show that while most positions are affected in one form or another, managers are to be fully vaccinated even if they do not interact with people frequently, while some entry level retail worker positions are not required full vaccination yet even though they tend to frequently interact with people. One reason for this, according to a male source who works at the company call center, is because the company does not own all store locations so they cannot dictate what resellers require from employees. Others have said it’s because they need to retain higher numbers of available employees for these entry level retail positions. The degree of exceptions vary state by state as more lenient states like Florida offer more opportunities for accepted exemptions, but the company has made this a national demand for all employees. Again a reason T-Mobile can get away with this is because the Supreme Court ruling does not prevent private companies from action, but OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) under the U.S Department of Labor, cannot force them to mandate vaccines.

It’s worth noting that T-Mobile is an “at-will” work place. At-will means that “an employer can terminate an employee at any time for any reason, except an illegal one, or for no reason without incurring legal liability.”  It also means that an employer can change the terms of employment without notice or consequence, be it in the form of altering wages, terminating benefits, or reducing paid time off.    Most countries do not have this structure and can only dismiss a worker with “cause,” but in the U.S every state minus Montana is assumed to work at-will, leaving employees vulnerable to arbitrary dismissal, a limited or on-call schedule, and cuts in pay and benefits. This however, can be changed legally via contract and through other exceptions including collective bargaining. For this reason the political leanings of the company play a huge role and as I’m told, T-Mobile as a company leans very liberal. An example of the scant power T-Mobile employees hold showed when the company closed many locations during the pandemic and according to several employees, “crammed” those left into stores to assert that they were still providing “many jobs.” My source also stated that T-mobile is mass hiring at call centers to offset the people they’ll be “losing”.

How Those Speaking Against the Policies Are Silenced

Anonymous Worker 1 was one of the initial people to reach out. She works for the event team doing marketing events so she never has to step into a corporate office but is required a vaccine. She told me that technically people can falsify their information and submit it on Cleared4, a health verification platform, and pass. The platform is used in many sectors of health, education, retail, hospitality and by corporate entities like T-Mobile and other companies, including Netflix. She says, T-Mobile doesn’t actually check to see if the process is legitimate other than the appearances for politics. She said that during the pandemic, the company praised them for being essential workers and for keeping them in business by doing extra jobs for the same pay grade. But she said, “for a company that claims to celebrate diversity, equity, and inclusion I feel excluded from being able to make my own decision as an informed adult. There’s no informed consent on the vaccines and Comirnaty won’t be released until 2025.” She reiterated that the company is on the side of supporting left-leaning politics. Recently an employee named Joshua had made a comment in a forum about higher ups ignoring requests form HR & insinuated that the company was using mandates to fire people because it would look better, but was really going to fire people anyway. He made a video on YouTube that has since been removed by the platform for “violating Community guidelines.” Below is the comment he made. I was told he has since been terminated.

Unlike the majority of people the mainstream media has shown to be against vaccine mandates, Worker 1’s background is different. She’s a Mexican-American who has worked at restaurants and retail since the age of 17. The eldest of five, (technically six since she discovered a brother from another mother a few years ago) she’s had to help support her family, largely because all of them have children. One of her sisters is in jail for heroin use and prostitution. Another of her sisters has an autistic son that her mother helps takes care of. She’s very afraid of retaliation as several people have already been fired and she cannot lose her job. I asked her some questions about how the mandate has affected her work.

Note: For this interview I wrote some questions out and she answered them via messaging, which is why she linked some information she wanted people to know.

1. Why are you refusing to get vaccinated?

W1: There has been a lot of censorship surrounding many negative/adverse side effects. I can't trust corporations that are bought for and sponsored by other corporations like Big Pharma, for the same political agenda. I have done my research and mRNA is still a new and evolving technology and we have not had decades of research implementing the technology in human vaccines.

2. Why do you think it's wrong to be forced to be vaccinated?

W1: The FDA and CDC approved Comirnaty which won't be released until 2025 or so, which in a way is misleading since we do not know if the final Comirnaty formula/dosage will be the same. It is also misleading since the Pfizer/Biontech (Pfizer claims it's the same formula) and Moderna vaccine are approved under EU (emergency use authorization) but not Comirnaty. We do not have official reportings from any of the companies regarding their processes. Moderna has been very secretive since its inception. Also, T-Mobile promised to not layoff people after the merger but they laid off all of the executive team and they were supposed to "create new jobs" after the merger, but all they did was place existing employees into "new roles" that were created with a different title like "Hometown Expert" or "Customer Loyalty Lead".

3. Is this political to you or personal?

W1: This is both. I will not be forced or coerced to get vaccinated when the IRB process was rushed, meaning most people are not able to have full informed consent for taking the vaccine. There is also no place to gain information from the study we are participating in. We do not know how our medical records are being used for the COVID-19 vaccine reporting, etc. "THE IDEA IS THAT PERHAPS ONE OF THESE COVID-19 VACCINES IN DEVELOPMENT MIGHT BE PREMATURELY RELEASED FOR USE ON POLITICAL GROUNDS."

4. What would it mean to lose your job?

W1: It would mean that everything I've worked for at T-Mobile will be null and void if I have to be employed somewhere else. I have been with T-Mobile corporate since 2018 but started at a Third-Party Retailer (PR) in 2014. I have had to work my way up and it has been a slow process. I have a 7-year-old daughter and am a single mother. Although her father and I coparent he works from home and I make more money than her father does, so this would mean I lose my health insurance, (daughter is on my plan) and benefits as well. Also, I would not receive severance pay and no PTO benefits will be paid out at all.

5. Do you feel persecuted?

W1: Yes, I do. I feel as though I have lost credibility amongst my "leadership team" due to expressing different views, even when I'm being told I did the right thing by my manager for getting my first vaccine. I cried after my vaccine appointment because I compromised my values for a corporation. Not to mention there is a stigma surrounding anyone that does not buy the narrative to "trust the science" when the scientific process has always been meant to be questioned. I also don't feel safe trusting people around me anymore since I get called a "Trumper" for not believing in the vaccine.

6. W1: How would you define yourself politically, left, right, independent, and who did you support in the recent presidential elections or primaries?

Politically, I am nonpartisan or Independent. I was a precinct captain for Bernie Sanders in the Iowa Caucus for the last election and saw corruption from the DNC because Biden was already chosen to be given the delegates by the precinct chair. I used to be a Democrat but changed my stance due to what I experienced first-hand in Iowa. I voted for Howle Hawkins (Green 3rd party candidate) and for other candidates that were on the Minnesota ballot that were not our mainstream picks because I was frustrated at the choices we had on our ballot. I no longer support Ilhan Omar because I feel as though she hasn't done much to curb the poverty, inequality that exists in equity for minorities, and can see how Minneapolis will be gentrified after what happened with George Floyd. I was born and raised in El Paso, Texas and saw many injustices and a corrupt government in Juarez, Mexico that led to the murders of thousands of women (femicide) in my border town. So now I feel like I must fight for our rights in the best way that I know how.

Internal Emails & Coercive Measures

Anonymous Worker 2: A worker who often deals with communications in the B2B department, (Business to Business Model) the business and account sales part of the company, shared an internal email from Vice President of B2B Mike Katz. In the email they reiterate the importance of TFB (T-Mobile for Business) employees, those dealing with sales, meeting the vaccination deadline or risking certain separation by April 2. Interestingly the company is “urgently hiring” for many of these positions with the vaccine requirement on both the B2B job description & the TFB.

Worker 2 said that many vaccinated employees were positive with Covid, including a double vaccinated and triple boosted employee, but the company was still urging the B2B workers go back to the office for four days a week. They also said an employee had an immunity disease and refused to get vaccinated initially because their doctor advocated against it, but T-Mobile’s “third party doctor” overrode it they had to get it. Worker 2 said, “this is not about health”. Company executives have reportedly been personally calling people, telling them they need to get the vaccine, and then compiling a list of the unvaccinated and calling each of them personally to check on their status. They revealed another VP named Jason Grutzius was recently let go for refusing the vaccine mandate and said they suspect the company made an “example” out of Jason for intimidation. Unfortunately Jason likely signed an NDA, so I was told it would be difficult to interview him. Below is the SVP announcing his departure.

Worker 2 also stated that all the medical exemptions and religious exemptions had been denied thus far, but a few extensions were granted. In fact, multiple people reached out to their Attorney General regarding violations but 95-98% have gotten the vaccine.

I asked worker 2 some questions about the current situation.

1. Why are you refusing to get vaccinated & why?

   W2: The math has not made sense to me. 99.97% mortality rate.

2. Why do you think it’s wrong to be forced?

   W2: I’m for freedom of choice. Everyone needs to analyze the risk/reward based on their situation. The minute that it didn’t stop transmission and the inability to accept natural immunity as an exemption, the conversation “it’s about health” was over IMO.

3. Is this political or personal to you?

   W2: I’m A-political. I believe in free markets and free thinking.

4. Do you think the company is forcing their politics on workers?

   W2: I’m not quite sure what’s driving. I suspect it’s government contracts, especially after the merger for approval.

5. What would it mean to lose your job?

   W2: Catastrophic. Would lose everything.

6. Do you feel persecuted?

   W2: Yes.

7. What’s your political ideology?

   W2: Registered Republican a long time ago. Align Libertarian (Free market capitalism)

8. How has this affected you personally?

   W2: Stress and anxiety to say the least.

9. What’s your annual salary and do you have dependents?

   W2: Parter & children. Higher than average salary bracket

Cancer Patient Enduring Chemo in Fear of Losing Their Job

Anonymous Worker 3 is in the Midwest, currently enduring a rare form of stage 4 cancer that requires four hours of travel to get to treatments. They’ve tried applying for a medical exemption to the vaccine but accordingly keep “getting the run around.” They described that the cancer treatments are very expensive and if they lost their insurance it would be catastrophic in terms of being unable to pay for them. Life and death. Here is the cost of their treatment (a shot) before insurance, for which they will have to pay $3,000 out of pocket. Worker 3 noted they didn’t know how they would even pay that, let alone the $29,846 below.

I asked them some questions about the vaccine mandate the company is pushing and how it’s affected them.

1. Why are you refusing to get vaccinated?

W3: I have a rare and agressive cancer. There is no treatment for it other then sugery which we did. We are doing clinical trails but those are very strict and have not beent tested with the vaccine. We are waiting to get it due to possible side effects causing us to stop treatment which would result in the cancer agressivly growing back and killing me.

2. Why do you think it’s wrong to be forced?

W3: It is my body and my choice. I do believe in vaccines but I believe it is a persons’ choice on getting them.

3. Is this political to you or personal?

W3: I feel it is both. I think from the company side it is more politcal then anything especially due to the backers of the company.

4. Do you think the company is forcing their politics on workers:

W3: Yes and they have always preached about being your self and diveristy and more. We go through huge semi-annual trainings on this and it goes against everything they do.

5. What would it mean to lose your job?

W3: I would loose my insurance thus I would not be able to do treatment and my cancer will come back. One treatment with nothing but the injection runs 30k.

6. Do you feel persecuted?

W3: I do and discriminated against.

7. Where does your political ideology lie?

W3: I dont go to either side. I look for what is good and helps humans in general. I dont have a politcal side.

8. Has this affected you personally, specifically with your health issues?

W3: Yes it has. It has caused anxiety and depression. I worried about this in September and had a huge panic attack. I was told by work it would never come to that and to not think about that far in the future. I told them I cannot afford to not think about the future. I almost did not have one. I have to think 5 steps ahead to make sure I get those 5 steps.

9. What is your salary if I may ask?

W3: Well I made roughly 47k last year on my own. My life can do a best seller story lol.

As I was finishing up this report, Worker 3 informed me that they finally got a response about their medical exemption and how to apply but that T-Mobile wants them to sign away their HIPAA rights. In this email the company cites that the employee must sign an “Authorized to Release Healthcare Information” form that will allow T-mobile’s own medical doctors from “Broadsphire” to contact their doctor. In other words the employee has to waive their HIPAA rights to a third party company. If they do not, the company will only assess the application based on the information they have been given by the employee, effectively denying them the exemption for lack of documentation, shown in the email below.

Below is the form they were sent and where they’ll have to sign away their HIPAA rights if they wish to proceed with an exemption. In addition the form contains medical questions that the patient’s doctor will be asked about the patient, eliminating the patient from the process altogether. The document notes that the Genetic Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 prohibits employers from requesting genetic information “except as specifically allowed by this law.”

A Vaccinated Anti-Mandate Worker & The Political Games The Company Plays

Anonymous Worker 4 is a woman from Texas who IS vaccinated but is against the mandate. She still wishes to remain very much unknown. She’s been working from home for years and doesn’t see why she has to be forced to go back into an office nor why those who are not vaccinated but work from home do if they’re rarely in contact with anyone else. She began by talking about the segregation between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated in her office.

She said recently the unvaccinated could not go into an office and were not allowed in conference calls. There is no option to work remotely for many positions either. She thought that President of Business Group, Mike Katz’s email had no consideration for what employees wanted. She noted how many companies had reversed course, but they did not. The corporate headquarters of the company are based out of Bellevue, Washington and she said, “this means liberal”. She mentioned the George Floyd protests two years ago and how that sparked some issues in the workplace. According to Worker 4, the company “forced” them to take what she called “white privilege training” for months. She considers T-Mobile a “woke”company and has “never seen anything like it.”

The expectation that bothers her the most is that they want people to return to the office by force even if they’ve been working from home since BEFORE the pandemic. In her case, she’s been working from home for 20 years. She noted that people have applied for religious or medical exemptions but has not heard of anyone getting approval yet.

One stark thing is that the form they must upload to Cleared4, that requires a picture of their vaccination card, now asks if people have been boosted. Even more bothersome, the personal information goes to a third party (Cleared4) actor. Some people are vaccinated but do not want to upload their cards because they don’t want their private information to go to a third party. Further she says, even if vaccinated, employees must still test themselves and upload a picture of a negative test when they go into an office. She mentions, “People are confused because they thought this ended with vaccinations.” Also even if employees have a religious exemption approved, they have to keep renewing it. This is Texas so there is much political tension and she says she “was discriminated against,” for her political views. She adds that most are staying quiet because they’re fearful and thinks this is strictly a political issue for the company. She cites that AT&T & Verizon had a mandate but rescinded once the government’s OSHA case was struck down by the courts. She said people can share their opinion of the company in a forum and many have commented, but it’s only about 5-10%. She also said that there’s a Chang.org petition to stop the vaccination mandate for all employees.

Is This Really About Health?

Multiple unnamed employees shared that they believe the firing of the “unvaccinated” is more about having a better excuse to fire people because the company planned on downsizing anyway. Using vaccine mandates as an excuse looks so much better for PR of the company. Many are feeling like things are getting worse and that they have to be careful with anything they say or risk getting fired easily. You can find similar discussions in an online forum called TheLayoff.com.

In the last few days many have lost their jobs and more layoffs are reportedly on the horizon. On February 7, 2022, the Senior VP of Sales George Fischer confirmed in an internal email that the company was terminating the Business IL Program, or Biz IL, and the Retail Development & Management (RDM). According to one source, they’ve laid off about 170 RDMs and their managers and those terminated got severance packages until April. Some people may get their job back if they choose to reapply but it would be to a different position. When the Sprint merger occurred, T-Mobile had said they wouldn’t fire anyone until three years after, but clearly that is not the case.

An anonymous whistleblower who did not even share their real name with me, sent data proving that T-Mobile’s mandate is at least questionable in terms of acting as a “public health measure.” According to the data the whistleblower sent based on raw company data they have access to, 77% of the workforce is vaccinated. T-Mobile has 72,159 employees, which means that around 17,000 employees are unvaccinated and these are the ones the company is willing to part ways from. As mentioned previously, the retail positions do not need to be vaccinated even if they’re the ones interacting the most with people and account for 94% of employee covid cases. In fact, last year 62,430 out of 66,412 covid exposures were retail related. So taking into account these numbers the mandate is due to the 5% or 3,982 non-retail employees who got Covid. Of the 66,412 covid exposures, about 73% or 48,754 reported no symptoms. The table below displays these numbers.

The Games They Play

Recently more and more countries and many states are removing Covid restrictions, including mask and vaccine mandates. Simultaneously many private businesses and cities are choosing to do otherwise and continue to demand vaccines from workers, threatening them with termination if they fail to comply.

New York City is poised to fire 3,000 unvaccinated municipal workers by the end of the week, for failing to get the vaccine. In one of the harshest actions in the U.S, the previous mayor Bill de Blasio, ordered all public and private sector workers in the city to get inoculated with the vaccines back in December. Current mayor Eric Adams continues the policy and has reiterated he will terminate those who do not get vaccinated. This Monday, hundreds of protestors marched across the Brooklyn Bridge, calling on Mayor Eric Adams to lift the mandate for city city workers. In California, Democratic Party State Assembly members introduced a bill this past Friday February 11, that would force businesses to require employees be fully vaccinated or face severe fines and penalties. The bill was introduced current State Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, who previously worked on Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign in 2008 and 2012, and three bother democrats.

While many are excited the restrictions are easing, the fight is far from over as people are now living in fear of thee next variant, the maskless and the “unvaccinated,” despite the fact that many mainstream and national medical organizations have revealed many contradictions and mistakes about COVID; revelations independent media has been covering for two years. Among them that cloth masks do not work to stop the spread or the virus and it’s questionable that any including N95s do because the virus is airborne. Recently according to a John Hopkins study, lockdowns were found to be entirely ineffective and according to the study and renowned doctors from the Great Barrington Declaration, actually damaging. The other notable key revelation lies in natural immunity, with the CDC admitting that natural immunity is at least five times more effective than immunity gained from vaccination. Even NPR has finally admitted people need to consider it as a factor and it should be looked at “optimistically.” In other nations like Germany, natural immunity can supplement a vaccination. Many side effects coming reportedly from vaccines are now discussed more openly, including menstrual disorders for women and myocarditis in young people.

The Canadian Trucker Convoys, a numerous group of thousands of truckers mainly from the capital city of Ottawa, are protesting against vaccine mandates and have dominated independent media coverage in the last few weeks. The controversial truckers have halted economic production and transportation due to their protests. The convoys have been condemned by the mainstream media, Trudeau’s government, and the vast majority of the “left” in the U.S and Canada, many of them relying on a superficial viewpoint of the protest from a left-right paradigm, rather than a workers versus government overreach. In fact, the convoys have been tied to “white supremacy” and strictly right-wing organizing by these sectors, contradicting the countless videos and interviews coming from independent media on the ground in Ottawa and surrounding regions. Just yesterday Canada declared a state of emergency, allowing them to arrest and imprison Canadian protesters for up to 1 year in jail and be fined up to $100,000.

The United States appears to be at the beginning of a war that begs to question how much Americans are willing to fight for their own medical freedom and how that will conflict with how much the government wants to exert control for a supposed approach to “public safety". One thing is certain, every time the U.S government has events in which it must deal with security and safety of the nation, be it 9/11, January 6, or Covid, it manifests via an increase in the surveillance state’s power and the American people never get those civil liberties back.

*Edited to protect anonymity of sources*