Union drive at Wells Fargo heats up amid intimidation claims

After Wells Fargo was mired in a 2013 scandal over employees who opened millions of fake banking accounts, the bank created a new centralized unit to review customer complaints and employees’ allegations of workplace abuses.

Now, however, that team is upended by its own turmoil as its members have accused bank officials of aggressively trying to block a unionization drive and firing employees in retaliation for their efforts to organize.

Wells Fargo officials are open about their disfavor of the unionization effort but deny that the layoffs of 11 employees in the bank’s conduct management intake department were a response to the ongoing unrest, saying they were part of planned organizational changes.

The discontent is playing out against the backdrop of a broader push that began last year to unionize employees of the San Francisco-based bank. Tellers and other employees at about 20 Wells Fargo branches so far have voted to join Wells Fargo Workers United, the first-ever union at a major U.S. bank.

In interviews, current and laid-off members of the conduct management department said clashes with management arose after they announced in early September their intent to hold a vote on whether the 48 members of the department would join the union. In response, bank officials sent employees a barrage of emails disparaging the idea and continued to oppose it in meetings between higher-ups and staff, according to interviews with workers and emails reviewed by The Times.

“I personally don’t believe that this union can help us move forward as a team,” a manager wrote in one email. “I don’t think this union can guarantee anything for any of you.”

In another email, another manager indicated unionizing would not help workers better their pay and benefits.

“The CWA has probably promised you that things can only get better if you vote for them, but ask yourself, if that were true, why wouldn’t every worker in the United States be in a union?” a third manager wrote in an email.

Kieran Cuadras, 42, who began working at Wells Fargo as a teller in the Sacramento area in 2002, said senior managers would “hijack” work calls to tell workers why they shouldn’t unionize. In a video meeting, workers were told they had to switch their cameras on to hear from a labor relations manager hired by Wells Fargo, Cuadras said.

On Oct. 1, Cuadras received a message to join a call, on which she was fired. “It was heartbreaking. I sat there and sobbed.”

“They laid people off days before voting. Wells Fargo is not supposed to taint the election process. How can that not be viewed as intimidation, days before the vote?” Cuadras said.

After their layoffs, the 11 employees filed a claim against Wells Fargo with the National Labor Relations Board alleging unfair labor practices.

The union vote, which began last week, will conclude at the end of the month.

Wells Fargo assured workers who were laid off they would still be able to vote in the union election, but then walked back that claim and contested their votes, said Nick Weiner, the organizing director for the Committee for Better Banks, a New York-based group affiliated with the Communications Workers of America, the parent organization of Wells Fargo Workers United.

“Wells Fargo has been pulling out all the stops to try to convince them to vote no,” Weiner said.

Wells Fargo spokesperson Rachel Wall said the layoffs were routine.

“We regularly review and adjust staffing levels to align with market conditions and the needs of our businesses. This decision was made earlier this year and has nothing to do with the union,” she said in an emailed statement.

Wall said that the bank disapproved of the union and stood by its attempts to inform employees about its position, but that it respected employees’ rights and would bargain in good faith with employees who choose to be represented by a union.

“We respect our employees’ rights to vote for or against union representation and appreciate their careful consideration of this decision,” Wall said. “We believe our employees are best served by working directly with Wells Fargo and our leadership, and, within our rights, we will continue to speak with our employees about these matters so that each employee can make an informed decision.”

Unions of bank employees are unusual. According to an analysis of 2023 data by the U.S. Department of Labor, only 1.2% of workers in the banking and finance industry are unionized, among the lowest rates of union representation across industries.

Workers said uncertainty about job security, a lack of transparency about administrative decisions and concerns about the bank’s internal checks on misconduct led them to try to unionize. Particularly jarring, they said, was an announcement that workers who had worked remotely for years would need to move to different states to work in person, or reapply for their jobs altogether.

The bank, workers said, had shifted some of the conduct management department’s responsibilities to employees based in India and changed policies and procedures in a manner that reduced the type and number of complaints the department investigated.

“Management wasn’t listening to our concerns about changes in our procedures and definitions that would let misconduct slip through undetected,” said Heather Rolfes, an attorney in the complaint review department who was laid off.

The conduct management intake department at Wells Fargo was created in the wake of the scandal that erupted in 2016 when The Times reported bank employees had opened millions of fake deposit and checking accounts, and often transferred funds from consumers’ accounts without their knowledge or consent. Regulators eventually slapped Wells Fargo with fines and forced the bank to overhaul its processes to improve compliance.

Workers point out that changes made to their department come as government watchdogs have begun to ease strict compliance measures imposed on Wells Fargo as a result of the scandal, signaling that the bank is nearing the end of more than a decade of heightened regulatory oversight.

Roslynn Berkeland, 32, who has worked at Wells Fargo for nine years, including three years in her current role in the conduct management intake department, said the layoffs have left a team that is less experienced and “completely overwhelmed.” On Tuesday she said she had been assigned 16 cases that day, double the number of cases she typically would handle.

“I’m really worried about accuracy and the risk we are taking on,” Berkeland said. “I don’t know who to ask questions to anymore.”

In response to questions about concerns that the bank has eroded its ability to properly investigate questions of misconduct, Wells Fargo’s spokesperson said that changes the company has made aim to address inefficiencies in the process and that its global sites are equipped to handle sensitive information.

“We have taken great care in continuing to optimize our processes so that concerns are routed appropriately at the outset and reviewed in a timely fashion by those best positioned to address or resolve the matter,” Wall said.