"The idea was to figure out their strategy, counter it, and find out where the key players are, and who they know"
Surveillance of labor movements and organizing is often couched in the language of "safety." Last year, secret internal documents from Amazon obtained by Motherboard showed that it was surveilling labor movements and environmental groups "to help keep our employees, buildings, and inventory safe."The intelligence team's surveillance efforts also included keeping an eye on the public social media accounts—including using Google Alerts—of prominent labor movement leaders such as David Rolf, a long-time labor movement activist, Mary Kay Henry, the president of the SEIU, and Rev. William Barber II, the founder of Moral Mondays and the Poor People's Campaign, grass-roots movements for racial and economic justice, and a pastor at the Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina. The alerts also included keywords such as "wage theft," "low pay is not ok," and "fissured workplace," according to a document seen by Motherboard.Do you, or did you used to, work at McDonald's? Do you know about the company's surveillance of workers? Or do you know anything else about companies spying on their workers? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, on Wickr at lorenzofb, OTR chat at lorenzofb@jabber.ccc.de, or email lorenzofb@vice.com. You can contact Lauren Kaori Gurley by email lauren.gurley@vice.com or securely on Signal 201-897-2109.
In 2016, a former McDonald's CEO blamed the Fight for $15 campaign for the implementation of automated pay kiosks at restaurants."When the Fight for $15 was still in its growth stage," then-CEO Ed Rensi wrote, "I and others warned that union demands for a much higher minimum wage would force businesses with small profit margins to replace full-service employees with costly investments in self-service alternatives."McDonald's franchise model has made it uniquely difficult for its fast food workers to unionize because workers are forced to contend with both the owner of their specific restaurant, and McDonald's. Several people within the intelligence team did not think that monitoring the labor movement was ethical, and some even doubted whether it was legal, according to the former employees. "Times are changing," one of the former McDonald's corporate employees told Motherboard. "So why is a company like McDonald's not facing the reality of what the changing workforce is like, and how labor is not an outdated discussion and something that it shouldn't actively oppose?" "I think what's frustrating is that McDonald’s—to put it very simply—is not putting their money where their mouth is," the former employee added. "They might say 'we support Black lives' or change a logo. But what is it doing structurally to help Black lives, and to show that they matter, not through PR, but through supporting workers?""A company should be working with employees and the people that drive the business, not building an intelligence program directed at reporting on those same people."