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.
About 880 people are to lose their jobs after the closure of a number of firms that provided laundry for hotels.
Four businesses which formed part of the Brooks Service Group went into administration and will now close after buyers could not be found.
The affected sites are in Bristol, Gravesend, Sunderland and Leeds. Talks are on-going about the sale of another operation in Norwood, south London.
Administrator PricewaterhouseCoopers said that one company had been sold on.
The individual businesses hit include Shaws Laundries at Gravesend, which employed 200 people and County Luxdon Laundry in Sunderland where about 140 jobs will go.
The two other laundries in Leeds and Bristol, trading as Brooks, employed 190 and 350 people respectively.
A part of the business which laundered work uniforms and which had bases in Bristol, Bradford and Batley in West Yorkshire was sold to Basingstoke-based Sunlight Service Group Limited last week, safeguarding 150 jobs.
Joint administrator and director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Rob Lewis, said it was 'very disappointing' that the majority of Brooks' operations had closed.
Eurofound (2007), Brooks Service Group, Closure in United Kingdom, factsheet number 64978, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/64978.