The unions have quite clear ideas about what needs to be done to deal with rapid transformation which is characterizing the Italian telecommunications market. But for it to be won, the game must be played together: on the one hand with companies, who must develop industrial plans in line with the spirit of the time and consistent with the challenge of artificial intelligence; on the other with the governmentwhich must refinance active policies, unlocking the funds necessary to develop new skills and to guarantee, where needed, solidarity with workers in difficulty.
The thoughts of Alessandro Faraoni, General Secretary Fistel Cisl, Riccardo Saccone, General Secretary Slc Cgil, and Salvo Ugliarolo, General Secretary Uilcom Uil. The three trade unionists exchanged ideas during the round table “The consolidation of telecommunications and the new challenges for work”, which was held on the occasion of the 2024 edition of Telco per l’Italia, taking place today in Rome.
A sector at the crossroads: what is needed to reverse the trend
“The telecommunications sector is in need of new skills, of a generational change: digitalization is a continuous process of transformation, and it advances, regardless of how we want to understand it. We don’t want to block it, but to manage it intelligently, making sure that it supports workers and not a mere replacement factor”, he began Alessandro Faraoniwho added: “We believe that active policies are fundamental to guarantee an ethically correct exit for workers who are about to retire and to support professional retraining plans for those who will continue to operate in a sector affected by very rapid transformations”.
Pharaohs alludes to Fastweb-Vodafone consolidation And to the sale of the Tim network to the Kkr fund. “We hope that in both cases an employment problem will not be created, but while we do not shy away from the issue we are aware that we cannot manage the situation alone: we need help, starting from the government and the companies themselves. To each their own skills.”
Riccardo Saccone, of Slc Cgilhas some more doubts. “The situation has not exploded as it could have, and I would not want it to do so now. After all, we are talking about a problem that the entire sector has been facing for more than a decade: every year the TLC sector loses about a billion in revenue, according to Assteland the employment data leaves no room for doubt: at the time of Sip’s privatization there were 140 thousand workers active in the sector, while today the entire sector does not have 100 thousand employees. For now this erosion of value has happened in a generally painless way, but now we are at a crossroads.”
For Saccone we are at a crossroads: it is time to start again and reverse the trend or to suffer further job losses, which this time could happen in a traumatic way. “In the face of these consolidation phenomena, we must push operators to intersect the employment plan more with the industrial strategy. These are two dimensions that should go hand in hand, and instead we continue to keep complex realities afloat with conservative tools that do not look at development. The litmus test is the fact that the sector is increasingly less attractive even for young talents”.
Salvo Ugliarolo, General Secretary Uilcom Uil, recalls that the situation is also the result of what he defines as “non-choices of the politics of the last twenty years. There is a problem of lack of industrial vision carried out by various governments, and the inability to make decisions has led to the tariff war, which has only benefited the end customer. That’s why we saw I welcome the merger between Fastweb and Vodadone. Then obviously we will have to verify the effects of the operation in detail, go into detail to identify any redundancies. But overall we are not worried, given that we are talking about two great realities that come from completely different worlds.”
Different story for the separation of Tim’s services and network. “We were very critical of that choice, above all because we believe that in this case too, as in many others, Italy has lost the possibility of maintaining strategic assets. In fact, the national network was given to an American hedge fund, which after a five-year investment plan will necessarily have to restructure and sell. Not to mention that we are not talking about an operation that solves the problems of the sector, which in the absence of development strategies will have to face new critical issues, which will require us to continue to defend assets and workers in the sector”.
The challenge of AI: processes must be governed, not algorithms
Then there is the issue of diffusion of artificial intelligence solutions. How will it impact telecom workers and what is the unions’ recipe? “AI is advancing as digitalization has advanced and we cannot block it, but we can do a lot to put it in support of human capital”, he said Alessandro Faraoni of Fistel Cisl. “There are already European rules that must be enforced in Italian companies, and we must demand that they be introduced into the first and second level contracts of the sector, pushing companies not only to invest in the people who will manage the new activities, but also to manage any problems related to the use of technology, in terms of work-related stress. Companies must help workers deal appropriately with AI.”
For Riccardo Saccone the important thing is to think about governing the processes, rather than the algorithms, without becoming stuck on ethical and moral questions on a process that is not only unstoppable, but which is already in an advanced state. “Once we determine whether AI is good or bad, what is the country’s view on using the technology? It’s not that if we say we don’t like it, the transformation stops. There is no doubt that artificial intelligence creates a transfer of wealth, objectively producing an improvement in the profitability of some activities. Of course, there is a risk that it will erode employment, and that is why we all need to sit around the table and understand how to redistribute this wealth, talking about the future and above all how to govern the processes”.
The problem is that it really seems like no one wants to sit at that table. At least second Salvo Ugliarolo of Uilcom Uil. “It is true that the first concern is overcoming work as we know it and that the ability to face the associated risks lies in governing the processes in the transition phase, but – I say this in a constructive way – who should we deal with? We have no institutional interlocutors. Regardless of the words that politicians can say on the issues, real consultation has been lacking for years. As regards AI, we have been seeking a discussion with the executive for almost twenty months, above all to delve deeper into the issues of the future of contact centers and contractual dumping. We would need to talk about these things with Mimit, or with the Ministry of Labor, to accompany the transformation and govern processes. But the truth is that we can’t have a serious conversation with anyone.”
