McDonald's spies on union activists – that's how scared they are of workers' rights
On 24 February, Vice reported that McDonald’s has, for years, spied on activists and employees engaged in labor organizing and the Fight for $15 campaign. Internal McDonald’s corporate documents obtained by Vice confirmed that the company has been concerned with gathering “strategic intelligence” on workers involved in efforts to secure higher wages, better working conditions and a union. This includes using data collection software to monitor employees and their networks through social media and “a team of intelligence analysts in the Chicago and London offices”.
This comes after years of reporting on similar efforts by Amazon to prevent the unionization of their own employees. Job postings for intelligence analysts to monitor and report on “labor organizing threats”; social media monitoring; interactive “heat mapping” tools to anticipate and pre-empt strikes or union drives; Pinkerton operatives; and, most recently, coordinated efforts with county officials to change the traffic lights outside Amazon’s facility in Bessemer, Alabama to prevent organizers from speaking to workers during shift changes – all have been deployed to secure the company’s bottom line.
As Vice points out, surveillance against labor organizers is nothing new. What’s new is the use of technology to aid in these efforts, which may also be in violation of federal labor law.
The surveillance and intimidation of workers is a feature, not a bug, and one that has come to define American capitalism at home and abroad. As Vox noted last June, “the creation of urban police forces was largely spurred by a desire to contain union activism and protest.” While police in southern cities are largely a vestigial outgrowth of slave patrols, in northern cities like Chicago, elite businessmen pushed for the development of municipal police forces to suppress labor organizing around demands like an eight-hour workday. The concept of policing as “public safety” came later.
There is no evidence to suggest government involvement in the surveillance of workers at either Amazon or McDonald’s. Yet the failure on the part of past administrations to condemn these egregious labor violations – or condemn the yawning wealth gap between megacorporations and the underpaid workers whose labor they depend on – amount to tacit approval of business-as-usual by any means necessary. This Sunday, Biden broke this awful trend by releasing a surprisingly strong statement in support of unions. While he stopped short of calling out Amazon by name, his video address was directed at “workers in Alabama” and represents the strongest pro-union statement of any president in modern US history.
“You should remember that the National Labor Relations Act didn’t just say that unions are allowed to exist, it said we should encourage unions,” Biden said. “There should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda. Every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union. The law guarantees that choice.”
Under an economic system that enriches CEOs by underpaying workers for the value of their time and pocketing the profits, there is a direct connection between the dystopian anti-labor tactics used by the likes of McDonald’s and Amazon and the $1.3tn transfer of wealth to the country’s 664 billionaires over the course of the pandemic. Bezos’s path to becoming the world’s first trillionaire is precisely because of his successful efforts at preventing unions from taking hold in his private empire.
As Marx put it: capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.
Biden now has a choice to make: Amazon or unions. He can’t fight for both.
On the campaign trail, Biden sent conflicting messages by cultivating the image of a blue-collar union man and simultaneously promising a room full of corporate donors that under his presidency “no one’s standard of living will change, nothing will fundamentally change.”
Biden adopted a $15 minimum wage as one of his few concessions to the left, in an effort to win over Bernie Sanders supporters, and later changed his tone by saying he didn’t believe the provision would last in the most recent Covid-19 stimulus package. The statement amounted to a shrugging off of one among a number of campaign promises that look less likely to be fulfilled by the day. Democrats are now dishonestly pointing the blame at a single and little-known Senate parliamentarian, though Kamala Harris could easily overrule the decision and lift nearly a million people out of poverty.
We can and should give credit to Biden for his recent statement on unions while also recognizing that words alone are not enough. Biden has the power to immediately pass a federal $15 minimum wage, raise corporate taxes, call on the National Labor Relations Board to investigate companies like McDonald’s and Amazon which unlawfully spy on their employees, and take a trip to Bessemer to show support for the facility’s 5,800 workers.
This is a David-versus-Goliath fight and the stakes are simply too high to stop short of executive action. Until he proves otherwise, we need to remember Biden’s message to corporate America: nothing will fundamentally change.
Indigo Olivier is a 2020-2021 Leonard C Goodman investigative reporting fellow at In These Times magazine
On 2 October 2018, the journalist Jamal Khashoggi walked into Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul. Within minutes he was murdered and his body dismembered; his remains have never been found. While the last of Riyadh’s many stories portrayed it as a “rogue operation”, the CIA swiftly concluded that the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, approved his killing. But Donald Trump, an admirer of the brash young prince, declared otherwise and declined to act.
Joe Biden, then a presidential candidate, vowed that he would make Saudi Arabia “pay the price, and make them in fact the pariah that they are”. Now in a position to act on his pledge, he appears to have changed his mind. On Friday, Washington declassified an intelligence assessment on the killing, as promised; the president is also to snub the crown prince, dealing only with King Salman. But while the US declines to say whether Prince Mohammed is included in the “Khashoggi ban” that it has imposed on visas for 76 Saudi officials, the clear message is business as usual, with only minor changes.
The reality is that the crown prince is not only running matters day to day, but is the 35-year-old heir to an old and ailing monarch. He has ruthlessly seen off his rivals; his predecessor as crown prince, Mohammed bin Nayef, is now detained. While Prince Mohammed’s manoeuvres have increased the tensions and divisions in the royal family, they have also tightened his grip on power. Washington knows it may be dealing with him for decades to come. Mr Biden may not call the crown prince, but his top officials do.
Yet the outcry has come from politicians and the likes of the former CIA director John Brennan, as well as Saudi dissidents, who are angered and frightened. Only weeks ago, one vanished while visiting the embassy in Ottawa, mysteriously reappearing in Saudi Arabia. Agnès Callamard, who investigated Mr Khashoggi’s killing for the UN, described the decision to name the crown prince without sanctioning him as “extremely dangerous” for the message of impunity it sends. Already, business people who distanced themselves from the kingdom after the journalist’s murder are cosying up again.
The US is no longer dependent on Saudi oil as it once was, but sees the country as an essential security partner.
Riyadh has made token concessions to the new administration, including releasing the women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul – while still imposing restrictions on her, and keeping others behind bars. For all its vaunted “modernisation”, under Prince Mohammed it has become more repressive at home and more reckless abroad.
The crown prince spearheaded the drive into the war in Yemen that Riyadh is now regretting and struggling to exit. After tens of thousands of airstrikes, and countless destroyed schools, hospitals and homes, the equally merciless Houthi rebels have only gained ground. This is a complex and entrenched civil war in which multiple players, including southern secessionists, have conflicting interests and civilians are an afterthought at best. And while Mr Biden has appointed a new envoy, and declared that the war must end, other priorities loom higher on his agenda.
Nonetheless, the US has finally cut off support for the Saudi-led efforts and sales of offensive weaponry – though since it says it will still sell arms for defensive purposes, the devil will be in the detail. In contrast, the UK has made the repulsive decision to continue to ship arms to Riyadh while slashing aid to Yemen by 50% this year, as the humanitarian catastrophe deepens. As the UN secretary general warned, with millions in desperate need, “cutting aid is a death sentence”.
Britain’s decision is doubly shameful, not only because it is the “penholder” for Yemen at the UN security council, and has done too little to push forward the attempts to seek peace in the country, but because it is a supplier and supporter of the Saudi-led coalition. Mr Biden has been rightly criticised for pulling back on his pledges to punish the Saudis. But Britain looks, as it is, despicable – and increasingly isolated – in its utter disregard for the lives of Yemenis.