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.
ThyssenKrupp is one of the world’s biggest technology groups. It employs around 188,000 employees worldwide and has 600 subsidiaries. In Italy ThyssenKrupp is the owner of the Acciai Speciali steel factory at Terni (Ast-Tk) and has around 7,000 employees in the country. At the end of 2005, the company reached an agreement with the trade unions and the local and national authorities on a reorganisation plan that envisaged the relaunch of the production activities of its Italian plants, including the production of electrical steel. This way the company reversed its initial decision to relocate production activities in another countries. The agreement also envisaged that the government and the local authorities would solve some problems of electricity supply and improve local infrastructures, thereby fostering the competitive growth of the Terni area. On 8 June 2007 the company announced the decision to concentrate all its Italian steel production in the Terni plants with the consequent closure of the Turin plant which should be completed by the end of 2008. It is expected that 285 of the 385 workers currently employed in Turin should be transferred to the Terni plants while 100 employees will be dismissed with the recourse to measures such as “mobility” with a view to early retirement and economic incentives for voluntary resignation. In Turin the trade unions reacted at the company’s decision by going out on strike: they agree with the investments plan proposed by the company but they do not accept the decision to close the Turin plant.
Eurofound (2007), ThyssenKrupp, Relocation in Italy, factsheet number 65476, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/65476.