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.
Owned by Indian conglomerate Tata, Tata Steel has announced plans to cut around ten per cent of the workforce at its Port Talbot site. Located in Wales, the site currently employs 4,000 workers, so this reduction in the level of staffing at the site would represent approximately 10 per cent of workforce employed at this site.
The strip products part of the business, responsible for producing sheets of steel used to make items such as tin cans, cars, roofing and fridges, is the focus of the job cuts. The decision to reduce the level of employment at this site has been attributed to falls in the price and demand for steel in Europe. The company has commenced a consultation process with the impacted employees. This consultation process will last at 45 days. The company has signalled that compulsory redundancies may be required as business requirements will mean that it needs to retain employees with specific skills.
This latest announcement of job cuts by Tata Steel follows an earlier reduction of almost 600 jobs at the same Port Talbot factory in November 2012. These earlier job losses were part of a broader programme of redundancies in the UK that also included earlier rounds of job losses in Scunthorpe (1,500 jobs) and Corby (100) (see here).
Eurofound (2014), Tata Steel, Internal restructuring in United Kingdom, factsheet number 77283, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/77283.