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.
Finnish postal company, Posti, has initiated employer-employee negotiations to cut up to 860 jobs. The internal restructuring is due to lowered volumes of letter post leading to diminishing turn-over. Digitalisation is seen as the explanation for the structural shift within the postal sector and in 2015 Posti's volume of sales diminished with 75 million Euro. The employer-employee negotiations concern employees in production, administration, sales and customer service. Staff working with the delivery of newspapers, packages and logistics as well as mail sorting are not affected by the internal restructuring.
The Finnish Post and Logistics Union (PAU) state that Posti has overestimated the amount of employees that need to be let go. The union leader states that Posti's ability to deliver post in accordance with the postal law will be severely damaged if 860 employees are made redundant. According to the the union, Posti has not been able to deliver post on time since a previous internal restructuring in 2014.
The ERM has previously reported on lay-offs following internal restructuring at Posti in June 2015.
UPDATED 24/3/2016:Following concluded employer-employee negotiations the total number of job positions which will be cut at Posti has been revised down to 680 positions. In total 181 employees will be directly dismissed and around 200 individuals will have their contracts changed from full-time to part-time.
Eurofound (2016), Posti, Internal restructuring in Finland, factsheet number 86432, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/86432.