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.
Ideal Standard, a Sevlievo-based manufacturer of bathroom fixtures, reinstated about 150 workers, said Vasil Kanev, the firm’s vice-president for Eastern Europe.
“The situation is not what it was two years ago but it is by no means hopeless,” the manager told the sixth Bathroom of the Year competition staged by Ideal Standard. “We’ve managed to overcome what I hope was the worst of the crisis thanks to unpopular measures,” Kanev explained. "[the measures] we have taken [to tackle the crisis] don’t seem vey nice but they are helping us come out of the doldrums,” he added. Downsizing was coupled with wage cuts and a “month without salaries,” where workers got no pay for two days each month until they make a month.
Ideal Standard International owns two plants in Bulgaria including Ideal Standard Vidima and Ideal Standard Bulgaria. Both facilities are based outside Sevlievo, central Bulgaria, and give job to some 3,400 put together.
Eurofound (2010), Ideal Standard Bulgaria, Business expansion in Bulgaria, factsheet number 70530, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/70530.