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.
In June 2014, the German engineering firm Bosch announced it would lower the workforce of its plant in Tienen, Belgium, by 2020. Originally, 410 job losses were envisaged. This has been reduced recently to 312 jobs. At the moment, the company is planning to use the subsidized early pension system for some 150 employees. The company hopes to stimulate voluntary departure of younger employees by giving them severance pay. The factory, which currently employs some 1,100 people, makes windscreen wiper parts and is suffering from price competition. As a result conventional windscreen wiper production in the Belgian factory is no longer viable. Bosch has indicated however that it will invest more in the production of the new generation of windscreen wipers in Tienen.
Eurofound (2015), Bosch, Internal restructuring in Belgium, factsheet number 83564, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/83564.