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.
Computer multinational Siemens announced on 18 March 2010 that it intends to cut 4,200 jobs at its IT subsidiary Siemens IT Solutions and Services (SIS). Around 2,000 of these job cuts will be in Germany, with the remainder in other countries. The company has said that it will aim to carry out the job reductions in as socially responsible a way as possible, although compulsory redundancies could not be completely ruled out. Employee representatives have criticised the announcement.
Siemens announced the carveout of the IT division in December 2009, justifying this step, among other things, by the need to provide the labor-intensive business with more flexible and market-oriented structures. In addition to the current plans to establish a separate legal entity, Siemens intends to create all the conditions necessary for a stand-alone operating business by the start of the new fiscal year on October 1, 2010 and to open up additional entrepreneurial options for strengthening its IT business.
Eurofound (2010), Siemens IT Solutions and Services (SIS), Internal restructuring in World, factsheet number 70302, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/70302.