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.
The French subsidiary of the American group Mars Wrigley has announced that it will cut 280 of the 350 jobs at its Bisheim site by the end of 2022.
The management justifies this plan on the grounds of a drastic and continuous drop in demand for chewing gum in tablet format in the European markets, aggravated by the COVID-19 health crisis, The restructuring plan will lead to the cessation, within a year, of the production of tablets marketed under the brand name 'Freedent'.
A job protection plan has been put in place to find internal and external redeployment solutions, while only 69 jobs in the chewing gum manufacturing area should be retained.
In November 2020, the Mars-Wrigley group launched an €18 million investment in Haguenau and had already announced a plan to cut 216 jobs at the Strasbourg and Haguenau sites. The site still employed 639 people in 2013, just before a previous redundancy plan that cut 207 jobs.
Eurofound (2021), Wrigley France, Internal restructuring in France, factsheet number 105377, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/105377.