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.
The home care and healthcare provider ZONL, active in the eastern Dutch municipalities of Noordoostpolder, Urk and Steenwijkerland, has initiated dismissal procedures with the national employment agency for 254 of its employees. It concerns all of ZONL's domestic help employees, as ZONL is closing down its domestic care branch entirely by the end of 2016 because it is incurring too many losses. Previous actions by the trade union did not bring the management to reconsider. The losses follow the nation-wide decentralisation of the responsibility to provide home care to the municipal level in 2013, which was accompanied by budget cuts and a subsequent squeeze on home care prices. ZONL had announced job losses among domestic help employees of roughly equal size for the end of 2014, which were averted by a one-time subsidisation by the national government. However, this could not prevent the dismissal of 430 other employees in 2015, or the current round of dismissals of those employees whose jobs had been saved by the subsidisation. All concerned employees will receive job transition services.
Eurofound (2016), ZONL, Closure in Netherlands, factsheet number 87550, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/87550.