US bank worker unions have been a rarity. But that’s changing. In 2020, 113 employees at California’s Beneficial State Bank voted to join the Communications Workers of America (CWA) in 2020, leading to the first union contract seen in the industry in 40 years. This was followed by employees at other local and regional banks joining unions at places like New York’s Genesee Co-Op Federal Credit Union.
Of course, forming unions at small banks and credit unions is one thing. It’s quite another to attempt it at Wells Fargo, a bank with $1.9 trillion in assets and an estimated 217,000 workers. The union effort at Wells Fargo remains small, but workers at a growing number of branches are voting in favor of unionization, early signs of a possible sea change in labor relations in the banking industry.
A Union Campaign at Wells Fargo Makes Inroads
Workers at a growing number of branches are voting in favor of unionization, early signs of a possible sea change in labor relations in the banking industry.
Workers at Wells Fargo first voted to join a union in 2023, when Albuquerque bank workers voted to join the CWA. Since then, Labor Notes reports that “29 more branches from Apopka, Florida, to Casper, Wyoming have voted to join the union, as have 35 workers who review customer and employee complaints.” This works out to a total of about 200 workers, a tiny sliver of Wells Fargo’s workforce, but a major breakthrough in an industry famed for its hostility toward unions.
The Committee for Better Banks (CBB), an affiliate of the CWA, is supporting the workers’ unionization efforts. Cole Weber, a former Wells Fargo employee and current CBB organizer, explained to NPQ that there’s an idea across the banking industry that unionization isn’t possible because these organizations are so large. “There’s an intimidation factor that makes people feel like it’s impossible to do anything,” Weber said.
A Union Win in Wilmington, DE
So, why have bank workers at Wells Fargo branches voted to unionize? Scott Keehn is one of those unionized employees. Keehn works at Wells Fargo’s Wilmington, DE branch. He is a senior premier banker who has been with the bank for about 25 years, working his way up from a teller position. Today, he manages the relationships for clients with $250,000 or more in assets at Wells Fargo.
Keehn said to NPQ that it was pay disparity issues at the company that led him to join the union. He dealt with it himself as a long-term employee and saw it happen to his colleagues, including a teller with the bank for about 34 years. “Although she was paid more than a lot of the mid-term tellers, they were bringing in new tellers at a pay rate that was higher than what she was being paid,” Keehn said.
Understaffing and the need for a unified voice were also factors driving the team’s decision to unionize, as well as the way benefits were handled. Over the last seven to 10 years, Keehn said, “our benefits have gotten dramatically worse—much more expensive and don’t cover as much.
Understaffing and the need for a unified voice were…factors driving the team’s decision to unionize, as well as the way benefits were handled.
Workers at the Wilmington branch voted for union representation in 2024 despite strong management opposition.
“They pitch it more as like, ‘Well, you give up everything when you join the union’ and it’s the exact opposite case,” Keehn said. “You now have the ability to fight for yourself and to fight for your peers, for the things that you need for you and your family and your career.”
The hardest part of the process, in Keehn’s opinion, was repeatedly hearing higher-ups say everything will change if the vote goes through, and worrying about potential shakeups. That didn’t happen, Keehn noted, and the person stoking those fears “disappeared” after the unionization. Now, Keehn tells workers at other branches interested in organizing to expect those management tactics: “Your role is still the same. You do exactly the same thing. The difference is you now have a voice at the table.”
Broader Workplace Concerns
Weber says that understaffing is a major labor issue across Wells Fargo. Tellers are dealing with long lines due to staff shortages, and some employees are expected to answer phone calls for hours with no breaks since there’s a constant queue. “Which means [employees] have to then deal with the frustration of the customers, which adds to the stress of the work that they’re already doing without a single break in between to take notes or properly document what’s happening on each of these calls,” Weber said.
Some programmers are “being asked to do the work of two or three other programmers, working overtime—practically working themselves to death—and then not having enough time to test the programs that they’re writing,” Weber said.
Todd Vachon, a labor studies professor at Rutgers University, told NPQ that another factor behind union organizing today is that pay in many white-collar industries hasn’t kept up with the cost of living. Another driver, he added, is increased micromanagement.
“Employees are just seeing how much the CEOs and investors are making and how much they’re being squeezed to do more and more and more in their working day without necessarily an increase in pay,” Vachon said. “And then all that work is essentially generating massive wealth for the folks on the top. So, the inequality is very visible.”
Vachon also thinks the COVID-19 pandemic transformed the way banking workers view job demands when they shifted to remote work. “They believed that they were equally productive at home without having to commute back and forth,” Vachon said. “Then the company started to try to bring the workers back and mandate working in the office.”
Union Growth at JP Morgan Chase
Wells Fargo is not the only major bank where workers are beginning to think joining a union might be a good idea. Indeed, a parallel effort at JP Morgan Chase (JPMC) has emerged. With $4.3 trillion in assets—more than twice those of Wells Fargo, JPMC is the nation’s largest bank. Workers at various JPMC branches have joined a national employees group known as the JPMC Workers Alliance.
Beth Kjos, a Houston-based software developer at the company, is among these workers. Kjos echoed Vachon’s observations about in-person work mandates, telling NPQ that she feels like promises were broken by higher-ups around back-to-office policies.
Kjos noted that management repeatedly said that three days a week in office would be the standard hybrid policy up until January of this year, when they suddenly called for workers to head back to office five days a week.
As a single parent of a nonverbal autistic child, Kjos found this shift difficult to manage while staying on top of her family’s needs. “I would never have taken this job if it was going to be full-time in the office,” she said.
Daniel Remington, an Illinois-based associate analyst at JPMC, has been with the company since 2009. The scaling back of workplace flexibility, he explained to NPQ, was a major factor in his decision to join the union effort.
In the past, working from home allowed him to help care for his wife when she was battling cancer, as well as support his niece when her father passed away. When his niece’s mother went to job interviews, Remington was able to provide childcare while working at home. “All of this was possible because I had the flexibility to work from home when I needed to, which we don’t have now. The unnecessary burdens this puts on working families is unacceptable,” Remington said.
As workers are forced back into the office, they’ve been trying to push for more stability with their physical working infrastructure. “At least give us a consistent place to sit, rather than making us scramble for desks every time,” Kjos said.
When there’s not a desk with a computer available, Kjos says that employees will sometimes have to resort to checking out a laptop. “I’m a software developer. If I don’t have two big screens, then I’m going to be slowed way down,” she added.
There are over 300,000 employees across JPMC. Kjos says that the workplace culture is fragmented depending on what department one is a part of, noting that “there are teams where you’re regularly being screamed at by management; there are teams where management would never think to do that. There are teams where the workers have enough.”
A 35-year-old Ohio-based software engineer who asked for anonymity due to potential workplace retaliation told NPQ that the original work-from-home allowances made doing their job much easier as someone who lives with autism.
This worker added that they struggled not only with working full time in the office, but with a toxic company work culture. “My partner barely sees me, because I work long hours to try to appease the ever-encroaching workload expectations,” they said. As the pace of work continues to increase, the person said they feel like workers are begging for scraps of a pay rate that’s not keeping up with inflation. They’ve been with the bank for over 10 years and currently make about $105,000, well below the median salary for a person in that career category.
What Comes Next?
Across the larger industry, challenges may come with organizing as job growth has slowed.
“When there’s a really tight labor market and employers are desperately needing workers, workers are empowered to try to make changes in their jobs where employers are more likely to respond to those efforts,” Vachon said. “But when there’s a really loose labor market or a higher unemployment rate, then workers are more concerned with keeping the job they have because they know if they lose their job, there’s not a lot of options out there.” Employers can use this market power to their advantage to push workers to take on more duties, he explained.
Still, white-collar professionals are often tech savvy, which gives them unique ways to organize, like JPMC Workers Alliance’s use of a Discord board to allow potential recruits to access organizing information without revealing their identities.
“The ability to communicate anonymously is really a benefit,” Vachon said.
Right now, at JPMC, the focus is still on building support for the alliance, rather than seeking individual branch elections as has happened at Wells Fargo. As Kjos explained, “We need to develop to the point where we have the critical mass in reasonable collective bargaining units to start the process of holding union elections.”
