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 Italian bank Unicredit has announced 8,000 redundancies in the EU mostly in Italy with the closure of around 450 branches and 5,500 job cuts by 2023. The announced redundancies are part of the company's broader 2019-2023 strategic plan, which will be strongly focused on containing costs, especially labour costs, and maximising shareholder value. The redundancies will be mostly concentrated in Germany, Austria and Italy.
The company argued it will act in a socially responsible way, but the trade unions deemed the plan as completely unacceptable. The General Secretary of First Cisl commented that the restructructuring completely disregards the sacrifices that employees have made in recent years and which helped the bank to overcome difficult times. In 2015, Unicredit has already cut 12,200 positions worldwide. In 2011, the group cut 7,290 positions in the EU (and recruited 1,135 people). Two previous restructuring are also recorded in the ERM Database, in 2006 (6,840 job cuts and 5,000 job creations in the EU) and 2008 (9,000 job cuts and 11,500 job creations worldwide).
Eurofound (2019), Unicredit, Internal restructuring in European Union, factsheet number 99495, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/99495.