Dear Chair Brown and Chair Waters,

Thank you for your strong leadership holding Wells Fargo accountable for how it treats its customers and its employees. We, the undersigned Wells Fargo employees, are uniting through the Committee for Better Banks to gain a voice and a seat at the table where the decisions determining our working conditions are made.

As you and your respective committees prepare for the next hearing with Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf, we would like to draw your attention to the attached articles about our efforts, “Wells Fargo employees pushing to organize union across bank’s workforce,” (Michael Sainoto, The Guardian, 2 June 2022) and “Inside Wells Fargo employees’ long, uphill battle to unionize,” (Ungarino, Kaplan, Johnson and Campbell, Business Insider, 23 June 2022).

We feel gaining collective bargaining rights is essential to helping our bank fulfill its promises to do better after the many scandals in the recent past. While the methods to report issues are presented in a simple fashion (“talk to your manager” or “call the Ethics Line”), there is very little transparency in what happens next for the reporting employee – and virtually no transparency if an employee wishes to remain anonymous because they fear retaliation.

We have a number of concerns for which we feel having union representation would help us address: the fake interviews reported by the New York Times which prompted the Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation; Wells Fargo pledging to raise the minimum wage while the overall median salary has fallen and pay increases have not kept up with inflation yet the CEO received a 20% pay increase; branch workers see signs of high sales pressure returning through tracking reports and branch performance comparisons; and our healthcare costs continue to increase as we are pushed toward high deductible insurance plans that can cause thousands of dollars in out of pocket expenses for prescriptions alone when the formula was changed after open enrollment ended.

Many of our teams and branches are inadequately staffed while filling positions can take several months to just post an opening, much less interview, hire, and train new hires. Meanwhile, salaried individual contributors find themselves working excessive hours, working during paid time off, or postponing healthcare needs because they feel obligated to ensure the work is completed. Also, Wells Fargo has not made pay scales available to employees so we have no way of knowing whether the wages we are receiving are properly aligned within the pay scale nor can we compare our current job scale to those of other open positions. Our paid time off policy can be strengthened to ensure it addresses the needs of all employees.

We kept branches open during the COVID lockdowns, transitioned to remote work while maintaining or even improving our productivity, and scrambled to maintain processes when our offshore teams were both locked down and unable to access our systems from home. We have answered the call to return to the office while Wells Fargo has abandoned efforts to protect our medically vulnerable coworkers and customers. With respect to the return to office, Wells Fargo has instituted a one-size-fits-all policy. Everyone is required to work in the office a minimum of three days per week – this is without regard to job function, location, productivity, etc. Given the high fuel prices and Wells Fargo’s “Green Energy” goals, this policy results in unnecessary trips into the office and simply does not make common sense.

As more of our coworkers step forward to join our organizing effort, we anticipate encountering from Wells Fargo executives making inaccurate allegations such as we are an outside third-party interfering in the relationship between management and employees; Wells Fargo already has programs and mechanisms in place to address employees’ concerns; Wells Fargo conducts market reviews to ensure fair compensation; and a union is not needed at Wells Fargo. To combat these forms of harassment, intimidation and misinformation, we encourage bank regulators to find ways to implement systemic remedies addressing our labor problems and ensuring our right to organize is protected before lifting outstanding consent orders, including the cap placed on the bank’s total assets by the Federal Reserve.

We believe that collective bargaining would empower all workers to thrive, rather than just the highest echelons of the bank. We believe a union would give us a voice, a seat at the table and would be an advocate for all employees. We further believe forming a union at Wells Fargo would help employees ensure there is accountability to the promises made around diversity, equity, and inclusion; advocate for fair and appropriate compensation; and provide transparency in response to concerns raised by employees regarding the types of risks that led to our many scandals and corrective actions. Had a union been in place, we are confident that the recent Wells Fargo scandals would not have occurred. A union would be beneficial to employees, customers and yes – even shareholders.

We hope this letter will give you some topics to address with Mr. Scharf at your upcoming hearings. Please let us know if we can provide you or your staff additional information about our organizing efforts as well as our perspective on the status of Wells Fargo’s culture and labor practices, and how they impact our customers. Please contact us at staff@betterbanks.org.

Sincerely yours,