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.
Danish Crown runs several large slaugtherhouses in Denmark. Due to a decline in pigs for slaughter the company has decided to close its slaughterhouse in Sæby. The company states that it has overcapacity in its slaughterhouses and needs to cut down capacity in order to become competitive. The company states that the current overcapacity costs 300 million DKK yearly at the moment. The closing of the slaughterhouse in Sæby entails that 800 employees will loose their jobs. The company urges the dismissed employees to seek jobs in one of their other slaughterhouses who needs to ramp up capacity and needs 450 more employees. However the nearest other slaughterhouse is placed quite far away, so might not be a solution for many of the dismissed employees. The company expects that the last pig will be slaughtered in Sæby in July 2023.
Previous restructuring events have been recorded in the ERM database for Danish Crown. In 2022 the company announced it will cut 146 jobs (Danish Crown-2023-DK), and in 2023 a further 100 jobs were cut (Danish Crown-2023-DK).
Eurofound (2023), Danish Crown, Closure in Denmark, factsheet number 108808, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/108808.