McDonald's has reportedly been collecting 'strategic intelligence' on unionizing workers as they fight for a $15 minimum wage

• For years, McDonald's has monitored staff campaigning for a $15 wage, according to a new Vice report.
• This includes tracking employees' social media and monitoring the Fight for $15 group, it reported.
• McDonald's refuted the claims

McDonald's has reportedly been collecting information on workers campaigning for a $15 federal minimum wage, including using a team of intelligence analysts to track employees' social media.

The company has been gathering information for years, using intelligence analysts at its Chicago and London offices to track workers linked to activist groups that advocate higher wages, better working conditions, and unionization, Vice's Motherboard reported.

This includes monitoring the Fight for $15 campaign and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to find out which McDonald's workers are active in the movement, Motherboard reported, citing documents it had viewed as well as two McDonald's workers with direct knowledge of the surveillance.

This is despite McDonald's announcing in 2019 it would no longer lobby against minimum wage regulation.

"This story is laden with false information, pulling together disparate pieces of information to build a sensationalist narrative that is inaccurate and misleading," a McDonald's spokesperson told Insider.

The company denied using fake social media accounts to gather information, and said its intelligence team is focused on threats to safety, such as natural disasters and civil unrest. The company uses publicly available information, the spokesperson added.

Fight for $15, which is financed by the SEIU, has been staging walkouts since 2012 to advocate for an increase in the minimum wage. The group has targeted McDonald's in particular, whose workers have been organizing protests calling for higher pay.

Documents viewed by Motherboard outline the aims of McDonald's intelligence services, including collecting "political intelligence on difficult political landscapes in complex markets that could cause significant business disruption," and finding out "how and where will FF$15 attack the brand."

One of the reports seen by Motherboard addressed "Ongoing FF$15 Activity Against McDonald's During the COVID-19 Crisis." It included information like the number of in-person and "virtual" protests the group had held and the amount of advance warning staff gave employers of their strike action.

And since at least last year, the fast-food giant has been collecting online data to monitor social media accounts, the sources told Motherboard. This includes reconstructing the friends lists of those involved in the labor movement, and using fake Facebook profiles, the sources said.

McDonald's wanted to find out "where the key players are, and who they know," a former corporate employee at the company told Motherboard.

A McDonald's spokesperson denied those allegations, telling Insider the company "has never used fake social media accounts to actively gather information, including labor activity."

The intelligence team is "solely focused on identifying threats to safety, including natural disasters and civil unrest, that could pose harm to employees and franchisees," the spokesperson said.

The company uses "publicly available information, in full compliance with the law and with our own ethical standards," they added.

McDonald's worker Gloria Machuca, who earns $9.50 an hour, told Insider's Juliana Kaplan that the minimum wage increase would change her life. Until recently she worked 80-hour weeks across two different McDonald's branches to support her six children.

"It is not fair that we work so much and that we have to suffer this much," she said.

In response to Motherboard's report, Machuca told the publication that workers are "not afraid" and that news of the information gathering won't stop them.

"These desperate efforts by McDonald's only show the power of the movement that we've built over the past eight years," she added.

Motherboard's report comes as President Joe Biden pushes for a $15 federal minimum wage.

The federal minimum wage, currently $7.25, has not been raised in more than a decade, but Biden's attempts face opposition from both Republicans and Democrats.

Companies are increasingly taking the matter into their own hands. Among those that have raised, or announced plans to raise, their hourly minimum wage to $15 or higher are Wayfair, Starbucks, Target, Amazon, and Costco.

A national minimum wage of $15 would mean around one in five Americans earns more, the Economic Policy Institute found. It could also help reduce income equality, its research found, with women, minorities, and frontline workers benefiting the most.