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.
Manufacturer Engel will shed up to 360 jobs by October 2020 downsizing its current 3,600 Austrian staff by 10%. This is the second stage of a broad restructuring programme motivated by the COVID-19 and declining orders of large-scale plants in the automobile industry. During the first stage in the first half of 2020, the company reduced the number of employees by 300. The final social plan assumes that the total job cuts this year will settle around 690. Meanwhile, many of the workers are still working on a short-time schedule.
Engel is one of the world's largest manufacturers of injection moulding machines and plastics processing machines and employs around 6,500 workers worldwide. At the beginning of the year, the company had 3,900 workers in Austria; currently, they are 3,600 - the majority of them (2,140) work in Schwerberg and St. Valentin (1,200), while another 260 work in Dietach.
Eurofound (2020), Engel Austria, Internal restructuring in Austria, factsheet number 101426, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/101426.