Ethics in the digital workplace
Digitisation and automation technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), can affect working conditions in a variety of ways and their use in the workplace raises a host of new ethical concerns.
Budapest Airport will lay off a sizeable part of its workforce, due to the coronavirus crisis. The epidemic and the related restrictions caused a fall in passenger traffic by more than 99 percent. While in April 2019 the number of arriving and departing passengers was 44 thousand per day, in April 2020 it is 250-200 per day. Since the level of traffic is expected to recover only gradually even after the opening of national borders, the management says it cannot keep employing a staff that is calibrated for 16-17 million passengers per year.
The layoff will be implemented in several phases. The maximum number of employees possibly made redundant is 275, according to the firm, but the actual number may be significantly lower, depending on how the traffic evolves in the near future. The low-cost airlines already offer tickets for flights to several dozen destinations in May at very low prices.
Eurofound (2020), Budapest Airport, Internal restructuring in Hungary, factsheet number 100527, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/100527.