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.
Payday lender, The Money Shop will make as many as 350 workers redundant across the United Kingdom. The company has 500 stores across the United Kingdom as well as three head office sites with 2,800 employees. The company is owned by US firm Dollar Financial and offers payday loans, pawn broking, cheque cashing, foreign currency, gold-buying services, pre-loaded holiday, cash debit cards and money transfers. It currently has the largest store-based network of shops in the UK’s short-term credit sector.
The 45-day formal consultation period has commenced and it is likely that as many as 200 of the 500 stores along with one of the head office sites will be closed. Staff have been told the restructuring plan will involve integrating the online and retail parts of the business in order to remove duplication resulting from previous acquisitions. The job losses follow the introduction of a cap on the costs of loans made by payday lenders in the United Kingdom, where payday loan rates are now capped at 0.8 per cent per day of the amount borrowed whereby no lender will have to pay back more than double the borrowed amount. The company has said that it will try to minimize the number of compulsory redundancies through national attrition.
Eurofound (2015), The Money Shop, Internal restructuring in United Kingdom, factsheet number 78137, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/78137.