IN just a few months, thousands of T-Mobile USA employees will lose their jobs. After raking in millions in taxpayer subsidies, T-Mobile is shutting down call centers in some of the very communities that gave it economic-development grants and other taxpayer subsidies.

T-Mobile counts on selling its products and services to U.S. customers. So it owes these consumers and communities something in return: good jobs. It can't simply take American customers' money while it shifts employment opportunities overseas.

Unfortunately for U.S. workers and communities, T-Mobile USA seems capable only of following the low road. The company has shown it is not committed to keeping good jobs in the U.S., empowering workers to provide quality customer service, or respecting workers' rights in the way its parent company does in Germany.

T-Mobile USA can still turn things around. It can bring back to this country more than 6,000 jobs it has sent overseas to countries including the Philippines and Honduras. It can keep good jobs in seven U.S. communities and honor the deals it made with taxpayers. And it can allow its employees to exercise their right to form a union.

But T-Mobile doesn't see it that way. It has refused to budge. It is proceeding with its plan to shutter seven U.S. call centers despite calls by elected officials in affected communities to keep them open.

Jim Brilhart, who provides technical support at the Allentown, Pa., call center slated to close, says, "I was really helping T-Mobile make money. But the company has thrown me in the trash."

Allentown workers like Brilhart, who helped the company by training other workers at centers in Albuquerque and Colorado Springs, were suddenly told that their only option to keep working for T-Mobile was to uproot their lives and move to one of those locations.

Astoundingly, taxpayers gave T-Mobile millions in state and local economic-development subsidies in four of the seven communities where centers are slated to close. Frisco, Texas, taxpayers provided $3.7 million; Brownsville, Texas, citizens chipped in $5.3 million; taxpayers in Lenexa, Kan., provided $3.9 million; and in Redmond, Ore., taxpayers gave grants of $1.3 million, according to Good Jobs First, a policy resource center that promotes corporate and government accountability.

Along with elected officials, workers facing job loss are fighting back against the closures. Those still on the job at T-Mobile USA are standing up for a union voice. Unfortunately, they work in an environment of intimidation, fear and surveillance, where managers repeat the corporate mantra to keep the company union free. Meanwhile, managers are submitting them to unreasonable metrics that are not grounded in the reality of the work they perform.

When technicians in three units in New York and Connecticut filed for union elections last year, the company launched an all-out assault on the workers' right to organize.

In fact, for more than a decade, T-Mobile workers who want a union voice have faced a campaign of harassment, captive audience meetings and even personal attacks by T-Mobile USA management. Just before a recent election in New York, union supporters were excluded from meetings at which corporate executives impugned them professionally and personally. Is it any surprise that these workers want a union?

Instead of attacking its own workforce, T-Mobile USA could follow the lead of parent company Deutsche Telekom, which recognizes and respects the right of workers to choose union representation. And Deutsche Telekom could insist that T-Mobile live up to its global labor standards.

What happens next is up to T-Mobile USA. But if this company is serious about expanding its U.S. business and catching up with competitors, it needs to make a U-turn by keeping jobs in communities that have supported the company and provided it a customer base.

In other words, T-Mobile needs to take the high road. The high road means keeping good jobs in our communities, not laying off or relocating 3,300 workers. It means bringing back those 6,000 jobs from overseas.

The high road means permitting skilled workers to provide the quality customer service they're trained for — not subjecting them to arbitrary monitoring and constantly changing metrics.

The high road also means respecting workers' rights and ending the campaign of fear and intimidation against workers who want to form a union.

If T-Mobile USA is serious about doing business in the U.S., the high road is the only viable path to take.

David Freiboth is executive secretary of the Martin Luther King County Labor Council, AFL-CIO.