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.
![img text](https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2022-05/ef22038_3.png)
Vallourec, the French specialist in seamless steel tubes, has announced 350 job cuts.
The company is heavily dependent on an auto market where demand has reduced due to the COVID-19 pandemic and reduced mobility / transport. The company is set to close the Déville-lès-Rouen plant (Seine-Maritime), which accounts for 200 jobs. The group's sites in the Nord department would also be affected by the loss of 130 jobs, 43 of them at Aulnoye-Aymeries plant and roughly 90 at Saint-Saulve plant.
Vallourec recorded sales of €716 million in the third quarter of 2020, down by 32%, but its gross operating income remained slightly higher. Worldwide, Vallourec plans to cut 1,050 positions out of a total of nearly 19,000 employees. It had already announced in the first half of the year that it was cutting 900 jobs in North America, that is a third of the region's workforce. Three previous restructurings were announced in 2015 with 550 job cuts; 145 job cuts in May 2014 and 117 job cuts in 2004.
Eurofound (2020), Vallourec Tubes France, Internal restructuring in France, factsheet number 102570, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/102570.