Here at Free Press, we see a lot of problems with AT&T’s proposed takeover of T-Mobile. The massive merger will eliminate competition in an already concentrated wireless market. It would leave two behemoths — Verizon and the newly bloated AT&T — in control of nearly 80 percent of that market, with Sprint a distant third. It will leave you paying more every month than you would with more choices for service, and it will be next to impossible to take your phone to another carrier. It could put thousands of people out of work.

Not everyone agrees with our position. In particular, we find ourselves at odds with the Communications Workers of America, a union we work in solidarity with on issues like opposing runaway media consolidation, creating good journalism jobs, and protecting public media. CWA has already endorsed this deal at AT&T, where they represent a lot of workers. And, in their experience, T-Mobile management has been especially hostile to unions and aggressively interfered with the efforts of their employees to unionize.

In a heated disagreement with your friends, sometimes you say things you regret. And some recent quotes in the press from Free Press staff about the union could be misconstrued. Let me clarify our position so there’s no confusion: Free Press supports the rights of workers to organize and collectively bargain, and we certainly do not believe T-Mobile or any other carrier should be preventing its workers from doing so.

We may disagree greatly about the benefits of this proposed merger and dispute many of the claims being made to justify it, but our target here is not the union or union workers. We believe any of these companies, especially ones enjoying astronomical profit margins, should not interfere with their employees joining a union if that’s what they want to do. Better wages and working conditions are something we can all support.

Now that’s cleared up, we will continue to have an honest and respectful debate about this merger — and we’ll be vocal about why we think it’s a raw deal for everybody with a mobile phone and dangerous for the future of innovation and the open Internet.

You can read a good overview of the problems with AT&T’s takeover in this blog post or get into the details with this fact sheet. And after you’ve weighed the evidence, you can take action to stop this train wreck over here.