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.
Schindler, a company specialised in the manufacture of elevators and escalators with its headquarters in Vienna, announced on 17 January 2006 a redundancy plan affecting 115 employees. The workers to be laid off in the course of 2006 are all engaged in the escalators production segment of the firm. This business segment will be relocated to Slovakia. Hans-Peter Schwarz, the management boards chairman, argued that increasing pressure on the costs side would make a relocation of the escalators production to so-called low-wage countries inevitable. A social plan is being worked out by the two sides of industry. The Schindler company currently employs some 770 workers in Austria.
Eurofound (2006), Schindler, Offshoring/Delocalisation in Austria, factsheet number 62813, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/62813.