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.
Repo Vabrikud, a wooden boards manufacture company in North-East Estonia, filed a bankruptcy petition and all its 148 employees will be made redundant. The company has been operating at a loss since 2019. The increasing prices for electricity and wood has had a devastating effect on the company. The company employed line operators, automation specialists, electricians and unskilled workers. It is expected that the jobs of about a few hundred people in partner companies are also at risk. These are woodworkers, transport companies, equipment maintainers and companies that provided a number of other services.
The Unemployment Insurance Fund has announced that they will start the collective redundancy procedure, which involves matching employers and employees, counselling and other necessary activities based on the needs of the workers losing their job. Several companies have already expressed their interest in hiring the employees made redundant.
The company has been active since 1974. In recent years, 90% of the production was mostly exported to Finnish and Swedish furniture manufacturing companies, with fewer goods going to Denmark and Norway.
Previous internal restructurings for the company were recorded in the ERM database in 2009, with 40 job cuts (Repo Vabrikud-2009-EE), and 2006, with 150 job cuts (Repo Vabrikud-2006-EE).
Eurofound (2022), Repo Vabrikud, Bankruptcy in Estonia, factsheet number 107554, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/107554.