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.
The British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, is to cut 315 jobs. The company has made this decision in order to tackle the fall in profits following the latest national policy on the reduction of prices of several pharmaceutical products. One year ago, for the same reasons, the company has reduced its workforce. The job cuts should affect mainly the primary care division (around 221 redundancies) and the speciality care division (around 41 redundancies). The trade unions reacted to the company’s decision announcing several industrial actions in order to avoid the lay-offs. AstraZeneca is one of the world leaders in producing medicines and other healthcare solutions. It has around 65,000 employees in the world and 14 manufacturing plants in 19 countries. In Italy, AstraZeneca has around 1,800 employees.
Eurofound (2008), Astra Zeneca, Internal restructuring in Italy, factsheet number 67356, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/67356.