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.
Benetton is to close its textile in Labin and lay off all 159 employees.
Due to a decrease in sales, Benetton has no longer an interest in maintaining production in Labin, and will move the production to Osijek, an already opened, larger factory that employs more workers.
Representatives of the trade unions were invited to a meeting with the employer and the director of production of the Olimpias Group (the group that took over the entire industrial sector of Benetton in textile production). There the director announced the plans to close the plant and move production Osijek, where the plant already employs 282 workers.
The employer is willing to pay to workers severance payment in the amount of one third of the yearly salary, or a maximum of three salaries, because the factory started to work nine years ago. The trade union is demanding that employer pays to every worker one salary per one year of work.
Benetton's production hall was built in 2006 in the industrial zone Vinez, and the investment was worth EUR 16 million. In June 2013 the factory was awarded the recognition of County Office of Pula -Croatian Chamber of Economy as the most successful company in Istria County in 2012 in the category of large companies.
Eurofound (2015), Benetton, Relocation in Croatia, factsheet number 78461, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/78461.