Popular Articles
Today Week Month Year


McDonald’s has a secret intel team that spies on its own workers, report says
By Cassie B. // Feb 28, 2021

Is your employer spying on you and tracking your movements online? This might be something you would expect if you work for the CIA or Google – who tracks pretty much everyone, employee or not – but many fast food workers were surprised to learn that McDonald’s has been using a secret intel team to spy on its workers.

Brighteon.TV

An expose by Motherboard revealed that McDonald’s has established a team of “intelligence analysts” who are tasked with spying on its employees to find out if they are involved in a popular movement seeking a minimum wage hike.

At the heart of the controversy is the “Fight For $15” movement. The group seeks to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour and is active on social media. The fast food chain has been internally labeling employees who are working with the group as a security threat and has been spying on them and monitoring their behavior online.

They’ve set up a team of intelligence analysts working out of Chicago and London to identify which of their workers are active in the movement and who they are working alongside to organize protests and strikes or try to create unions.

A $15 minimum wage hike is part of Joe Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package, although that aspect of the bill has become a major sticking point and may not pass. The federal minimum wage has been sitting at $7.25 per hour for more than a decade.

McDonald’s is reportedly particularly concerned about workers who want the right to join unions like the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, along with higher pay and better working conditions.

Documents that were obtained by Motherboard showed that McDonald’s wanted to collect “strategic intelligence” on “counter-parties” and "political intelligence on difficult political landscapes in complex markets that could cause significant business disruption and impact returns on investment."

Secret intel team creating fake Facebook personas to spy on fast food workers

The secret intel team is tasked with determining where and how Fight For $15 will attack their brand. In one report, they tracked individual labor activists’ activities, including keeping a list of the number of virtual and in-person protests each one attended. They cited events such as protests in parking lots, people driving through parking lots and drive-throughs with signs on their cars, individuals blocking traffic, and people parking billboard trucks with messages about Fight For $15 at their restaurants and headquarters.

In addition to internal analysts, McDonald’s has been using data collection software and social media monitoring tools to scrape data that is openly available online to monitor their employees' social media accounts. Sources said they were using the tool to reconstruct the friends lists and social networks of employees who were involved in the labor movement via fake Facebook personas.

A former corporate employee of the fast-food chain who asked to keep their identity anonymous to avoid retaliation told the publication: "The entire thing was messed up. 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."

Another of the fast food chain's concerns is the advocacy campaign launched by the ACLU pressuring the fast food chain to give all of its employees paid sick leave.

Fight for $15 has already been successful in lobbying for a minimum wage of $15 in states like Florida, California, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois and New York. It is considered one of the most successful labor movements to be seen in recent decades.

Sources for this article include:

InsiderPaper.com

Vice.com



Take Action:
Support NewsTarget by linking to this article from your website.
Permalink to this article:
Copy
Embed article link:
Copy
Reprinting this article:
Non-commercial use is permitted with credit to NewsTarget.com (including a clickable link).
Please contact us for more information.
Free Email Alerts
Get independent news alerts on natural cures, food lab tests, cannabis medicine, science, robotics, drones, privacy and more.

NewsTarget.com © 2022 All Rights Reserved. All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. NewsTarget.com is not responsible for content written by contributing authors. The information on this site is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional advice of any kind. NewsTarget.com assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. Your use of this website indicates your agreement to these terms and those published on this site. All trademarks, registered trademarks and servicemarks mentioned on this site are the property of their respective owners.

This site uses cookies
News Target uses cookies to improve your experience on our site. By using this site, you agree to our privacy policy.
Learn More
Close
Get 100% real, uncensored news delivered straight to your inbox
You can unsubscribe at any time. Your email privacy is completely protected.