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 bakery group with 1,550 employees went into administration yesterday after failing to overcome tough trading conditions and a fire at one of its factories. Rathbones Bakeries, which had sales of £100 million in 2004 and supplies Tesco and Morrisons, suffered the blaze at Carlisle in February 2005. Rathbones, which also features Harvestime and Fresha Bakeries, employs 444 staff at its Walsall head office, with another 409 at Leicester and the remainder at Peterborough, Carlisle, Wigan, Wakefield and Middlesbrough. As well as difficult trading conditions, Rathbones' Carlisle site was gutted in a fire that cost it millions of pounds. About 185 people worked at the factory.
In May 2005, Morrisons decided to take on part of the bakery operation saving up to 400 jobs.
Eurofound (2005), Rathbones Bakeries, Closure in United Kingdom, factsheet number 61367, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/61367.