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.
A further 90 workers at Clarks the shoe maker have been told they are to lose their jobs. The staff in Ilminster were told on Friday 7 January 2005 that the factory would close by early April 2005 because foreign imports mean it is no longer competitive. This follows a previous decision in 2004 to lose 107 jobs with the closure of its factory in Barnstaple, north Devon. The firm, which also laid off 13 people at its headquarters in Street, Somerset, has blamed lower wage costs of South Asia factories. Clarks, which once had 30 factories in the UK, has now closed all but two of them.
Eurofound (2005), Clarks, Closure in United Kingdom, factsheet number 60993, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/60993.