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 French group Lacoste Operations (the French clothing retailer company) has presented a layoff plan in its Spanish subsidiary (Lacoste Ibérica) to dismiss 100 people out of a total of 436 (23% of the workforce present in Spain). The restructuring plan will affect 58 people from Barberà del Vallès (Barcelona), 7 people from Barcelona and 35 from the headquarters of Badalona (Barcelona). The company reported the restructuring plan is motivated by 'economic-financial, organisational, technological and productive causes'. Union sources have informed that Lacoste announced at the same time to the works council that from now on the group will deliver its products to the Spanish market directly from France.
Eurofound (2018), Lacoste, Internal restructuring in Spain, factsheet number 95606, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/95606.