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 Hungarian national mail company Magyar Posta announced that it will cut 110 jobs in Budapest, mainly in the administrative and management departments. The firm says the dismissals will not involve areas affected by severe labour shortage, like post delivery staff, logistics staff or local post office workers.
The redundancy is another step within the firm’s ongoing bureaucracy reduction programme, after a number of earlier rounds of dismissals, the last in February 2019. As in the earlier rounds, the firm has initiated consultation with the company council to reach an agreement on redundancy payments.
The president of Postman Trade Union, on the other hand, said that they will try to ensure that Magyar Posta offers new posititions to the dismissed employees in departments affected by labour shortage. In early October, the union warned that at least 300 deliverer, office worker and driver positions cannot be filled, due to unattractive wage levels. But even the implementation of the last wage raise early in last spring caused financial difficulties to the mail company, forcing it to initiate the sale of many of its properties, including its resort houses.
Eurofound (2019), Magyar Posta, Internal restructuring in Hungary, factsheet number 99227, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/99227.