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.
Royal Bank of Scotland has announced that it is to cut 2,300 of its 106,000 UK jobs. The job cuts will come from amongst back office staff rather than customer facing employees, and they are being made as the bank attempts to reduce its costs. As of 15 February 2009 the bank has not announced when or at which sites these jobs will be lost.
Update: 7 April 2009: Royal Bank of Scotland has announced that it is to cut a further 4,500 jobs in the UK. The job losses will be based in the firm's back office operations. The location of the job losses have not yet been announced by the firm, and it is likely that the location of the job losses and the number of compulsory redundancies involved will be determined at local levels after negotiations with trade unions. The announced job losses are a result of financial problems that the firm has faced over the previous 6 months. A spokesperson for the UK general trade union Unite stated,
'Unite is appalled that thousands of people, who form the backbone of the RBS operations, are to be made redundant. These employees are totally blameless for the current position which RBS is in, yet they are paying for the mistakes at the top of the bank.'
Eurofound (2009), Royal Bank of Scotland, Internal restructuring in United Kingdom, factsheet number 68168, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/68168.