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.
Italian bank Veneto Banca started a mobility procedure that will affect up to 730 employees. According to the industrial plan, the group is to cut operational costs by centralising functions and services and reducing the number of managers. This will also involve the closure of 70 branches.
The management is open to consider various solutions, including internal relocation for about 300 employees and other 'soft' measures (for example early retirements and incentives for part-time work) for the remaining 430 staff.
Trade unions warned that the number of workers close to retirement age may not be sufficient to cover the planned exits and calls for the adoption of the so called 'solidarity contracts' (these are agreed by companies through firm-level collective bargaining agreements that envisage a reduction in working time to avoid dismissals). Unions have urged the company to adopt a more ‘responsible’ approach, also considering that further 70 branches are already in the process of being closed (Veneto BancaIT-2015).
For information about previous restructurings announced by the group, see also Veneto BancaIT-2012, Veneto BancaIT-2011.
Update, 23/04/2016: The parties agreed 300 internal relocations and approximately 100 incentivised early retirements. Other redundancies will be avoided thanks to the use of part-time contracts, the activation of solidarity contracts and a reduction in the number of branches to be closed (60 instead of the 70 initially announced). In addition, the group will hire on a permanent basis about 100 employees currently enrolled as apprentices or employed on fixed-term contracts.
Eurofound (2016), Veneto Banca, Internal restructuring in Italy, factsheet number 86936, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/86936.