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 board of directors of the eyewear manufacturer Safilo approved its 2020-2024 industrial plan which entails 700 redundancies among the company's workforce.
According to the company, the loss of the LVMH licence for luxury glasses (among which Dior) made it necessary to launch an industrial restructuring plan, which responds promptly to the new production scenario, realigning its current production capacity to the company's future needs, and thereby safeguarding the competitiveness and financial strength of the group in the long term.
Among the 700 redundancies are all the workers (250) of the Martignacco plant (Udine), which will be closed. Another 400 redundancies are expected at the Longarone (Belluno) plant, which will almost halve the current workforce of 900 employees; the last 50 redundancies concern the headquarters of Padua, while the Venetian headquarters of Santa Maria di Sala should not be affected. The company thus is dismissing one out of four of its employees who currently are 2,600 in total.
The company opened a negotiating table with the trade unions in order to identify all the social shock absorbers available to limit the impacts on the people involved.
Eurofound (2019), Safilo, Internal restructuring in Italy, factsheet number 99350, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/99350.