Call centres: unions sound the alarm: ‘A third of jobs are at risk’

Today’s meeting at the Ministry of Enterprise and Italian-Made Products marks a new development in the dispute involving Callmat, the Matera-based company that manages customer care operations for a TIM contract. Over 340 workers are affected, currently on average on 25% short-time working, with the risk, as highlighted by the unions, of a deterioration in the near future and job losses by the end of 2026. But the Lucanian negotiations are merely the most visible part of a crisis running through the entire call centre and CRM-BPO sector, now regarded as a national industrial emergency. So much so that the sector’s trade unions – SLC CGIL, FISTEL CISL and UIL FPC – could call a general strike.

The new major threat facing trade unions is the way in which automation and artificial intelligence are reshaping the customer service market, cutting the volume of work assigned to operators and reducing the safety nets that act as a buffer. Most recently, the introduction of a specific artificial intelligence programme (Wonderful.ai) by Tim has raised the alarm.

In general, in a request for sectoral talks sent on 15 April to Mimit and the Ministry of Labour, the trade unions referred to a crisis affecting around 3,000 workers and a potential impact on up to 15,000 people over the course of the year. In a sector with just over 35,000 employees, this means putting almost a third of the workforce at risk.

The map of disputes – compiled by the SLC CGIL – helps to illustrate the scale of the problem. There are 316 3G employees in Campobasso and Sulmona who were made redundant by 3G itself following a change in the contract for Enel’s back-office and quality assurance activities (who, however, received re-employment offers from the new supplier Accenture–Datacontact, accepted by 196 employees in Campobasso and 42 in Sulmona under the safeguard mechanisms of the Enel tender). There are 55 In&Out workers between Rome and Taranto; 76 Konecta staff in Livorno. In Calabria, across Rende, Catanzaro and Crotone, 652 Konecta R employees are on 80% solidarity pay following the conversion to medical records digitisation activities, a project which, according to the unions, has failed.

“Clients, from TIM to Wind Tre and Enel, as well as the banking sector, are scaling back their orders. Digitalisation is influencing these decisions. However, if left unchecked, this situation could lead to unmanaged redundancies. This is why we are calling on MIMIT and the government to commit to providing opportunities for retraining. But so far we haven’t even managed to get a sectoral round-table discussion,” comments Daniele Carchidi, national secretary of SLC CGIL. “This is a time of extreme crisis. For years – points out Pierpaolo Mischi, of the UIL FPC national secretariat – we have been calling for a response from the Government and the MIMIT, which focuses on individual disputes without looking at the sector as a whole, which is in deep crisis and undergoing downsizing. The Ministry is absent.” The sector “is collapsing. We have months of appeals to the institutions behind us. And never before have we found ourselves on the same side as the employers’ side. We need support from the institutions and the Government. Otherwise, we won’t get out of this,” remarks Fabrizio Morroni (Fistel Cisl).