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 automotive supplier Hannon System has announced a restructuring plan to cut from 40 to 60 positions in its plant of Charleville-Mézières (Ardennes). This plant produces air conditioning components (evaporators and radiators) for the automotive industry. It belonged to Visteon and was taken over by the Korean group Hahn Auto Holdings in June 2015. The management has announced its plan to the Works council to remove 40 to 60 jobs out of a a total of 583 employees, more or less 10% of the total workforce, depending on the future negotiation with unions on the employment safeguard plan. The reorganisation, the third one since 2007, will take effect in the first quarter of 2017. The plant had 1,300 employees in 2004 and 630 in 2014. The restructuring mainly concerns indirect positions of executives, administrative staff or maintenance and quality agents. According to the HR director, the plan will reduce labour costs by automating some jobs to improve productivity. The plant has also to face the drop in production announced by Ford, the main customer of Hanon System.
Update 13/03/2017: the management has opened a voluntary departure plan to cut about 54 positions by December 2017. If there are no enough volunteers, which seems to be probable, the management will proceed through forced dismissal. Furthermore, the management has announced it will stop in a near future the production of different plastic product to keep only the production of high value aluminium product. The reorganisation will lead to cut about 150 positions.
Eurofound (2016), Hanon Systems - Halla Visteon , Internal restructuring in France, factsheet number 88980, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/88980.