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 local public transportation company of Rome, Atac and its subsidiaries Atac Patrimonio and Ogr Roma announced plans to cut 323 administrative jobs.
Following the announcement, on 12 May 2014 the companies and the trade unions reached an agreement in order to avoid job cuts: until 29 May 2014, employees may ask to be assigned to duties related to blue-collar jobs (e.g. as drivers, ticket agents or ticket collectors). Workers can also ask to reduce their working hours. In order to favour the first option, the agreement provides that the employees will maintain their officer pay for a period of 30 months.
A meeting between the unions and the companies will be held on 30 May 2014. Atac and trade unions expect that a significant number of workers will opt for the prospective opportunities. The Municipality of Rome disclosed its intention to look for alternative solutions aimed at avoiding redundancies.
Updated, 10/06/2014: Just over 100 of Atac's white-collar workers decided to reduce their working hours and, accordingly, their wages in order to avoid being made redundant. Nearly 50 employees asked to be assigned to blue-collar jobs, half of them asking to be employed as drivers.
According to the source, the negotiations will now reopen and several alternatives are possible: (i) to continue with the layoffs, making 180 employees redundant; (ii) to give another deadline to employees to express ineterest to be assigned to blue-collar jobs or to reduce their working hours and wages; (iii) to reduce the numbers of redundancies. The source reports that an agreement should be reached in the coming weeks.
Eurofound (2014), Atac, Internal restructuring in Italy, factsheet number 77049, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/77049.