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.
General Electric has announced up to 470 job cuts in France out of a total workforce of 16,000 employees. For the most part, these should be collective conventional termination of contract (rupture conventionnelle collective), a mechanism introduced by the Macron Orders of September 2017. The job reduction concerns 149 positions at Power Conversion France, 90 at Grid and 229 at Alstom Power System (including 146 in the plant located at Belfort). Only the group's headquarters, located in Boulogne-Billancourt, is not affected by these job cuts.
In a joint position, Alstom Power System's unions CFDT and CFE-CGC stated their concern about the 'consequences of workforce reductions on business continuity, skills and expertise retention' and asked for hires to compensate any loss of skills. For the Alstom Power System entity, the collective conventional termination plan is supplemented by a 'senior project' which concerns all the establishments and the 1,844 permanent jobs. Therefore the 229 positions targeted will be cut via two departure mechanisms: collective conventional termination and early retirement. The CGT union calls for 'an ambitious hiring plan with tutoring to bring the age pyramid back into line'. Negotiations with employees' representatives are ongoing and management expects the first departures in April 2019.
Eurofound (2019), General Electric, Internal restructuring in France, factsheet number 96529, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/96529.