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.
Epiroc, the Swedish mining product manufacturer, has announced its plan to dismiss about 425 employees in Sweden. The majority of these dismissals concern employees in Örebro where 350 workers will lose their jobs. In Fagersta, about 75 employees will be dismissed.
According to Epiroc, restructuring is mainly relating to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and to the need to adapt business activity to the new market situation and to the decreased global demand for mining products. Epiroc underlines that the restructuring event is also continuation to efficiency measures taken by the company in 2019.
Epiroc is a is a mining product manufacturer that has over 14,000 employees worldwide and facilities in Sweden, United States, Canada, Australia, China, India and Germany. The company is based in Sweden.
Updated 06/10/20
Epiroc has reduced staffing levels by 175 employees in Örebro and by 74 employees in Fagersta. In total, 249 employees are lost their jobs, which is 176 fewer than what was announced in June. The press manager at Epiroc declared that the reason for this is that the company has received more orders than what it expected based on projections from April and May. In total, 9 of the 175 employees who are being dismissed in Örebro are full-time workers. The rest are consultants, employees who are retiring and voluntary redundancies.
Eurofound (2020), Epiroc, Internal restructuring in Sweden, factsheet number 100822, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/100822.