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.
Tesco-Global, the Hungarian affiliate of British retail conglomeration Tesco, announced a downsizing that potentially affects 700 employees. After notifying the unions, the firm informed the employees about the dismissal by letter. The final magnitude of the job loss will depend on how many workers will receive an alternative offer from the company, and how many of them will accept the offer. But even if part of the workers gets a new job, the elimination of their earlier jobs constitutes a collective dismissal.
The reorganisation entails the merging of several jobs, which will require that employees become more versatile and can be assigned various tasks more flexibly. Another part of the reorganisation is to reduce the floor area of the store segment of the hypermarkets, and use the space freed up to attract service providers into the hypermarkets – for example, pharmacies, post offices, restaurants, clothing shops.
The present reorganisation is part of an ongoing trend during which several hypermarkets have been closed and certain activities have been outsourced in the past five years. According to the management, this means that the company can now operate with fewer employees than in the past.
Eurofound (2020), Tesco-Global, Internal restructuring in Hungary, factsheet number 101422, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/101422.