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.
Coca-Cola European Partners, the British multinational Coca-Cola bottling company, has announced the collective dismissal of 360 employees in Spain (approximately 10% of the workforce), mainly affecting workers in the commercial area.
The company intends to undertake a process of reorganisation, optimisation and homogenisation of its commercial area to simplify the way it markets and distributes its products. Moreover. Coca-Cola EP places the workforce adjustment within the restructuring process that the company is carrying out at European level: the first phase involved the closure of its Malaga (Andalusia) factory at the end of 2020 (where 80 people were employed). This new collective redundancy is the second part of that plan, affecting the commercial area of the company instead of the industrial part.
According to unions, the adjustment will also affect the IT department (with offices in Madrid and Catalonia). The company has announced the plan to unions at the permanent dialogue table that it maintains with the workers' representatives.
Eurofound (2021), Coca-Cola European Partners, Internal restructuring in Spain, factsheet number 103596, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/103596.