Lloyds Bank to Staff: We Know Your Net Worth, Now Negotiate
Lloyds Bank's 'customer insights' team—a phrase that rolls off the tongue like 'thought police'—allegedly compared the financial health and 'resilience' of its lowest-paid employees to its actual customers. This was to determine just how little they could get away with offering in pay talks. The bank claims this was 'anonymized data,' which offers little comfort when the entire exercise is
designed to gauge collective vulnerability. One might wonder if they also use customer data to ensure their loan products hit the sweet spot between 'affordable' and 'just barely crushing your soul.' This isn't just about data privacy; it's about a predatory approach to labor. Imagine sitting at a table across from someone who just finished reviewing your overdraft history. It's an economic
panopticon, reducing workers to algorithms of financial stress. Perhaps next, they'll use genetic data to assess 'wage tolerance.' How many layers of 'insight' do corporations need before they simply pay people a living wage?