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 UK-based multinational engineering company, Babcock International Group has announced that 250 of their 1900 employees at Rosyth Dockyard in Scotland will be made redundant in January 2018. The statutory consultations between the management, the affected employees and the trade unions are now underway.
Babcock’s contract with the Ministry of Defence to build two new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy is coming to completion. The management said in their statement that because of the 'one-off' nature of the contract, redundancies were 'inevitable'. They stated that they would work closely with employees and the trade unions to redeploy as many workers as possible within the business.
On behalf of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU) Scotland, chair Gary Cook called on the company to ensure there would be no compulsory job cuts and warned that the job cuts 'cannot be the start of a downward spiral' for the shipyard.
Eurofound (2017), Babcock International Group, Internal restructuring in United Kingdom, factsheet number 92714, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/92714.