...also, it seems weird to me that workers representatives knew, before the project even started, that it was in their best interest to ask for this data to be

...also, it seems weird to me that workers representatives knew, before the project even started, that it was in their best interest to ask for this data to be anonymized. It was as if workers, collectively, knew the whole time that this sort of thing was systematically happening, and were actively working towards preventing management from finding out. That's what I mean by "not pulling on the same string".