Vice just broke the story on McDonald’s creepy and despicable campaign to “collect ‘strategic intelligence’ on workers advocating for a $15 minimum wage.”

McDonald’s uses social media surveillance and other tools to identify and track workers organizing with Fight for $15. Internal documents show the fast food giant collected data on the number of protests or online actions workers attended.

McDonald’s is a billion dollar corporation with plenty of resources to improve the lives of all of its workers, but instead executives choose to spend money surveilling and suppressing workers’ efforts to organize. This creepy surveillance discourages workers from getting involved in labor organizing and increases the likelihood that they could experience retaliation from their employer. This decision ultimately ends up harming working class people, especially Black and brown people who are more likely to experience economic insecurity.

Economic insecurity is just one manifestation of structural oppression. So when McDonald’s released a statement last summer committing to advance racial justice, people were quick to challenge the contradiction. No one is blind to the hypocrisy of McDonald’s hollow PR statements “in support of Black lives.” If McDonald’s actually cared about Black people, it would embrace structural change like increasing the minimum wage because economic justice is racial justice.

Workplace surveillance is dangerous, and it will only exacerbate existing forms of discrimination and injustice in our society. Surveillance is one more way for those who hold positions of power to exert control over those who don’t. We need to stop this.

Tell McDonald's to stop spying on workers and stop being hypocrites on racial justice.

Petition language:

McDonald's,

Surveilling workers organizing for better higher wages and the right to unionize is despicable and, in places with better labor laws, illegal. And no one is blind to the hypocrisy of McDonald’s hollow PR statements “in support of Black lives.” If McDonald’s actually cared about Black people, it would embrace structural change like increasing the minimum wage because economic justice is racial justice.

McDonald’s is on the wrong side of history. Workers have come so far, and they’re not backing down. Stop surveilling workers and stop being hypocrites about racial justice. Support raising the minimum wage, protect workers’ rights, and let workers unionize.