Telecom employees are advocating for government limitations on the utilization of artificial intelligence (AI) in the industry, expressing concerns that the technology is used for worker surveillance and altering the accents of foreign call center agents. The Canadian Telecommunications Workers Alliance raised these issues on April 30 before the House of Commons’ standing committee on industry and technology in Ottawa.
The alliance, comprising major sector unions such as Unifor, the United Steelworkers union, and the Canadian Union of Public Employees, represents 32,000 workers in Canada’s telecom sector, including employees from Bell, Rogers, and Telus. During the session, Roch Leblanc, Unifor’s telecommunications sector director, disclosed that at least one company was employing AI to conceal accents of offshore agents, potentially misleading customers into believing they were interacting with local staff while the jobs had been outsourced.
Leblanc highlighted the loss of approximately 20,000 jobs in the telecom industry over the last decade due to automation and offshoring. He expressed concerns that AI could expedite this trend, especially in telecommunications where it is being used extensively to supervise employees, including monitoring technicians’ activities and task durations. Furthermore, AI is capable of scrutinizing call conversations word by word to redirect calls or detect sales-related patterns.
The alliance urged government intervention to regulate AI-based monitoring, citing increased psychological stress and work pressure on employees. Nathalie Blais, a research advisor at the Canadian Union of Public Employees, emphasized the need for ethical AI usage that benefits society without causing deception or job losses. The alliance proposed the establishment of a permanent federal working group focused on AI to facilitate cooperation among government, industry, and civil society in shaping AI implementation.
Additionally, they called for enhanced safeguards to protect employees’ jobs, their rights, and Canadians’ data security. Minister of Artificial Intelligence Evan Solomon assured that the government’s forthcoming national AI strategy would address the impacts on the labor market.