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.
Oxymat is a Danish company that produces PSA generators for the onsite production of oxygen and nitrogen gas. Jesper Sjögren, CEO of Oxymat, claims that the company has backshored the production from Slovakia to Denmark because of the higher creativity of Danish engineers. Moreover, the labour cost gap between Slovakia and Denmark has reduced during the years. Sjögren also claim that Oxymat can offer nitrogen plants that are smaller than those of the competition, which is a key feature on a ship, where space is limited. Moreover, the CEO aims to keep as many operations as possible in-house and bring outsourced products back to Oxymat. This way, the company can achieve full control of delivery times and quality. Oxymat is just one among 71 companies members of Dansk Metal (the Danish Union of metal workers) that, according to the annual survey of the Union, have backshored production to Denmark.
Eurofound (2015), Oxymat, Reshoring in Denmark, factsheet number 174, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/174.