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.
Hanson, a firm that manufactures bricks, has announced that it is to close its site in Stewartby near Bedford with the loss of 200 jobs. The firm attributes the decision to close the plant to new UK Environment Agency regulations on sulphur dioxide emissions that it says are too costly to comply with. The site is due to close in February 2008, although previously the firm had informed workers that the site would close at the end of 2008. Hanson will continue to operate another site in Cambridgeshire, at which a different clay is used that does not cause the same emissions problems.
Eurofound (2007), Hanson, Closure in United Kingdom, factsheet number 66081, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/66081.