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 French telecommunications company Orange has announced plans to dismiss up to 400 employees, as a result of the acquisition of the Spanish telecommunication company, Jazztel. Orange estimates that it will save € 1,300 million with the merger. Part of the savings will derive from network and commercial costs and from the impact of the development of the optical fiber network.
Update: 04/02/2016:Orange has presented its final plan which includes 550 redundancies - 150 more than the initial plan announced in September 2014. Dismissals will affect workers from Madrid, Seville, Barcelona, Valencia and Valladolid. The measure aims to reduce the duplication of work detected after the integration of Jazztel. Discussions with the trade unions on the measure will start after 8 February 2016. The company has also announced that they will hire an additional 300 people at its call centre subsidiaries in Oviedo and Guadalajara, as reported here.
Eurofound (2014), Orange, Merger/Acquisition in Spain, factsheet number 77569, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/77569.