Wells Fargo - Committee for Better Banks-CWA

In a recent article in the Guardian, workers at Wells Fargo, the third largest bank in the U.S., shared stories about their ongoing campaign to organize a union across the financial institution. The article features interviews with workers from Wells Fargo United, a campaign with the Committee for Better Banks-CWA, who discuss the various challenges workers face and the constant struggle to have a voice on the job in the face of the company’s blatant anti-union stance. “If it’s left to the senior leadership, the changes won’t occur. So we have to collectively bargain and take control ourselves,” said Jessie McCool, a senior compliance officer at Wells Fargo.

Workers also discussed how the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated ongoing safety concerns and stressed the need to have a union to prevent the abuse of workers and consumers. In 2016, whistleblowers with the Committee for Better Banks-CWA exposed Wells Fargo’s fake account scandal. Wells Fargo has faced a series of other scandals in recent years including mortgage and auto loan abuses, adding on products to customer accounts without their knowledge, a lawsuit alleging mass overtime pay violations, and more. Ted Laurel, an account resolution specialist at Wells Fargo, said, “We want the customer base to know that we’re forming a union really for them. We’re tired of having our name dragged through the mud at Wells Fargo because of things that we’ve asked to have more control over, but the company refuses to give us that control.”

Last year, CWA Local 9412 members at Beneficial State Bank successfully won the first union contract in the banking industry in 40 years. The workers at Wells Fargo hope to build on that win and organize to form a union and negotiate a contract that protects their interests as well as the interests of their consumers.