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 group Tereos, France's leading sugar producer, has announced that Béghin-Say is to shut down its refinery in Nantes by the end of 2009. The site employs 172 people and produces 120,000 tonnes of refined brown sugar a year with a turnover of 160 millions euros - a Tereos spokesman said -
Tereos says that the decision has been made as a result of global overproduction of sugar and the withdrawn of European subsidies to the refining industry, generating a loss of 10 millions euros.
The closure is linked to the deterioration of economic conditions following the new sugar regime.
Privately-owned Tereos said that the new regime would have forced the company to treble output at the plant to compensate for the fall in subsidies. This was unfeasible, said the company, which informed employees about the closure.
Headquartered in the northern French city of Lille, Tereos is the second-largest sugar producer in the European Union and the first ethanol maker. It was created in 2004 from the merger of Béghin-Say and a beet sugar cooperative, Union SDA.
Eurofound (2008), Béghin-Say, Closure in France, factsheet number 67397, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/67397.