- A number of bank employees are discreetly discussing whether to follow the lead from colleagues at nearly two dozen branches of Wells Fargo that organized under the umbrella of the CWA guild, according to Barron’s. Talks come amid discontent over management’s mandate that its 300,000 employees work from the office five days a week.
JPMorgan’s attempt to impose a strict return-to-office mandate may end up backfiring on the bank, encouraging staff to organize into a labor union.
On Monday, Barron’s reported a number of employees have begun holding discreet discussions geared at copying the successful effort by colleagues at smaller rival Wells Fargo.
More than a year ago, Wells Fargo management suffered a blow when staff at an Albuquerque branch of the fourth largest U.S. lender by assets joined the Communications Workers of America guild in a historic vote. The unionization push has since spread to nearly two dozen branches across the country with official collective wage bargaining launched in November.
The private exploratory talks at JPMorgan follow last week’s announcement that the financial giant led by Jamie Dimon would completely kill off hybrid work wherever its office buildings could accommodate the full return of staff.
“We think it is the best way to run the company,” JPMorgan wrote, adding that half of its staff already work five days a week from the office.
Should the return-to-office push succeed, JPMorgan would be the second major megacap corporation after Amazon to institute a strict office mandate against the wishes of many of its staff. While some advocates see such measures as a return to the norm, the explicit threat that dissenters should leave sparked speculation the ulterior motive is laying off employees through the backdoor.
Bank disabled comments after flood of protest from staff
JPMorgan, which expects to complete construction this year on a new 60-story Manhattan skyscraper that can house 14,000 employees, said it understood that “not everyone will agree” with management’s decision.
Apparently that proved to be a bit of an understatement. According to various media reports, the bank disabled the comment function on its internal messaging board after being inundated with a flood of protest from employees willing to use their full name.
Hybrid work is proving to be a thorny issue for financial giants. On the one hand, Wall Street is an industry where the most important assets are a bank’s human capital. Aggravate staff too much and management could not only lose experienced bankers, those bankers could end up taking their rolodex of trusted clients to a direct competitor.
On the other hand, a lack of frequent interpersonal contact between employees can prove harder to strategize on how to build new lucrative banking relationships. And junior staffers who lack experience may struggle to learn if the more senior pros are not accessible.
Fortune reached out to JP Morgan for comment, but had not received a reply by press time.
An RTO mandate that explicitly targets ‘mass headcount reductions’
More than two full years have passed since the world shook off a once-in-a-century pandemic that left behind at least 7 million reported deaths—a number that likely drastically underrepresents the true toll. Alone in JPMorgan’s own domestic U.S. market, 1.2 million lives lost were attributed to COVID.
Initially companies were hard pressed to argue why office workers ought to return full time after successfully proving they can operate without rigid office schedules. The flexibility has helped workers move out of crowded and expensive cities or take up work remotely for employers that otherwise might not have been an option.
But a number of CEOs have felt the added distance creates unnecessary friction within teams and are hoping companies like Amazon can push employees into a return to the pre-pandemic era.
The tide might be turning. One of the earliest opponents of working from home was Elon Musk, who told remote and hybrid employees they can “pretend to work somewhere else” if they refuse to come in.
The world’s richest and most successful entrepreneur sought to reframe the “Marie Antoinette” debate as an unjust luxury bestowed upon white-collar employees denied to working class essential workers.
Now that he has the ear of President-elect Donald Trump, Musk is now planning to implement a return-to-office mandate targeting what he hopes will be “mass headcount reductions” across the federal government.
