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.
Tata Steel has announced plans to cut a total of nearly 1,200 jobs from 3 of its sites in the UK. The affected sites are Scunthorpe, Motherwell and Cambuslang. The move comes as further bad news for the UK steel industry and its associated industries, which have suffered numerous recent job losses. Tata Steel is the largest employer in the industry and owns most of the former British Steel group. 3,000 staff are employed at the Scunthorpe site, from which the largest portion of the redundancies will come. 900 jobs will be cut at Scunthorpe, with the remaining 270 jobs coming from the two Scottish sites. The timescale for the latest job losses is not known. The steel industry has faced increasing pressure over recent times, and it is being reported that if the current situation continues then Tata Steel may look to close the Scunthorpe operations completely. The UK government has come under fire for its lack of intervention in the steel industry crisis, though the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Sajid Javid has announced that working groups will be set up to examine how the UK industry can win more contracts and become more competitive. The TUC has criticised these plans, arguing that more significant intervention should have happened earlier.
Update 02/01/2016:Ministers in Scotland have announced plans to delay the closure of the two Tata Steel plants in Motherwell and Cambuslang. The Scottish Government has supplied the rescue package, amounting to 195,000 GBP which will allow a number of workers to remain on standby at 60% salary. It is not being reported how many workers will be retained on this basis and nor is it known for how long these payments can continue. The aim of the package is to ensure that the plants could resume production quickly in the event of a sale being agreed.
Eurofound (2015), Tata Steel, Internal restructuring in United Kingdom, factsheet number 85278, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/85278.