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.
Pfizer the American international drugs firm is to cut 110 jobs from its research and development plant in Kent, it announced on Friday 22 July 2005. However the firm said the job cuts would be offset by an almost identical number of jobs being moved to the plant. The factory employs 3,600 staff and 400 job cuts in manufacturing at the site had already been announced earlier in 2005. The latest cuts come as part of a global business review, aimed at saving $4 billion. The current 'Adapting To Scale' job cutting exercise follows the company's takeover of rival drug companies Pharmacia and Warner Lambert in 2002. A spokesman for the firm said: 'The site is now recognised as being efficient and effective and its record is that it is the greatest drug discovery team in the entire world, so it's obviously of great value to Pfizer.'
Eurofound (2005), Pfizer, Internal restructuring in United Kingdom, factsheet number 61964, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/61964.