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.
Bombardier, the Canadian manufacturer of trains and aircraft, has announced plans for further job cuts, a large number of which will be at its sites in Germany. According to these plans, around 7,600 jobs in the company's Transportation division are to be cut by April 2006. The company had already announced in the spring 2004 that 1,500 jobs were to be cut in Germany; a further 850 job cuts are now planned at the group's German sites.
Bombardier says that the plans are due to the fact that its core business with trains in Europe has fewer prospects for growth. Jobs are to be lost at sites in Aachen, Kassel, Mannheim and Bautzen, although the group's largest factory in Germany, which is located in Hennigsdorf, will be affected the most: 535 job cuts are planned at this site. The company's site in Halle-Ammendorf, which employs 640 staff, is to be maintained as an independent company, with half of the staff that it currently employs.
Eurofound (2004), Bombardier, Internal restructuring in Germany, factsheet number 60955, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/60955.