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Article

19 Nov 2021

Author:
Lauren Kaori Gurley, VICE

USA: HelloFresh Slack messages reveal the company censoring social media content related to unionising attempts & monitoring employees’ posts

"Internal Slacks Show HelloFresh Is Controlling Talk of Unionization", 19 November 2021

Internal Slack messages from... HelloFresh show how it’s struggling to respond to ongoing union elections at its California and Colorado warehouses. In the messages...HelloFresh managers discuss monitoring employees who post about the union to social media, hiding union-related posts, attempting to delete a negative user review mentioning poor warehouse working conditions, and ignoring customers who have questions about the union.

The Slack messages also show how HelloFresh is trying to produce an anti-union video, specifically seeking to interview warehouse workers with “negative” experiences with unions who will tell their coworkers to “vote no” on forming a union. 

These efforts coincide with a sophisticated campaign inside two of HelloFresh’s warehouses to persuade more than 1,000 workers who are in the midst of a union election to vote against the union...

...HelloFresh’s branding, social media, and customer care teams have been tracking union-related posts on Twitter and Instagram using a social media marketing tool called Falcon and posting them to Slack...

HelloFresh’s customer care team, which is employed by a contractor called Sitel, has also been tasked with reporting social media posts about the union as spam, hiding posts, or removing them...

HelloFresh directed its customer care team to track but not to engage with social media posts about the union, but in some cases, users would contact the company about a delivery issue, then suddenly change the subject to the union, according to Slack messages...

“Customer and employee feedback that is volunteered to the Company—positive or negative—is important to us,” a spokesperson for HelloFresh told Motherboard. “Using official HelloFresh accounts to communicate with customers allows us to ensure that comments and concerns are being handled appropriately. Additionally, it is our duty to correct misinformation and mischaracterizations of our company.”

“We respect our employees’ right to vote for or against being represented by a union,” they continued. “Our goal has and always will be to present the facts about HelloFresh so employees can make informed decisions.”

After Motherboard reached out to HelloFresh for comment for this story, all of the Slack channels that had union-related posts were made private, a HelloFresh tech worker confirmed to Motherboard...

In response to the company’s handling of the union drive, HelloFresh’s white-collar tech worker employees have spoken out on Slack, and have begun taking action...

During an all-hands meeting on November 12, the company avoided responding to employees’ concerns and questions about the union drive, according to an open letter to the company’s CEO that more than 50 HelloFresh tech workers wrote this week. ..

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