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 Hermès luxury goods group has opened a new leather good workshop in France in Riom (Puy-de-Dôme), which is to employ 280 people in the medium term.
The luxury brand, which manufactures its leather goods in France, intends to use the new site to meet global demand for its handbags. The 1930s building has been converted into a production workshop and will also house an apprentice training centre (CFA) to train 1,600 people to the saddlery and leather goods CAP. In the medium term, the workshop is expected to employ around 280 people to produce the bags entirely by hand.
Hermès, which employs 23,242 people, including 14,320 in France, has been inaugurating an average of one leather goods factory per year in France for the past ten years. Three job creations were already recorded in the ERM database, in 2023 with 280 job creations Hermès-2023-FR, in 2017 with 500 job creations Hermès-2017b-FR and 250 job creations Hermès-2017a-FR.
Three other Hermès leather workshop projects are in the pipeline, at L'Isle-d'Espagnac (Charente), due to open in 2025, before Loupes (Gironde) and Charleville-Mézières (Ardennes).
Eurofound (2024), Hermès, Business expansion in France, factsheet number 201592, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/201592.