Wells Fargo union accuses the bank of ‘unlawful’ tactics

Wells Fargo employees on a team that voted to unionize have hit another bump in their organizing efforts.

The employees, whose 21-16 vote to form a union was certified in December, have filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that Wells has wrongly refused to bargain with them.

The charge, sent late Thursday via Wells Fargo Workers United-CWA, the Communications Workers of America-affiliated organizing group, argues that the bank’s decision to not bargain is unlawful.

The unit is part of the bank’s conduct management intake team, a group of employees based in different parts of the country who review customer and employee complaints. In December, the unit became the first non-branch team at Wells to approve a union.

Two weeks after the vote, the $1.9 trillion-asset bank requested an NLRB review of the election, which has yet to be completed. Wells said in a letter to the CWA this week that because the results of the request haven’t come back, the bank isn’t legally obligated to bargain with the group, or provide requested salary and personnel information to union organizers.

“Of course, if after appeals are concluded, the CWA were to conclusively become the certified bargaining representative of the unit employees on the conduct management intake team, then Wells Fargo would meet its legal obligations to bargain in good faith and provide relevant responsive information to the CWA as may be requested,” Wells’ lawyers said in the letter.

The CWA countered in a Thursday letter to the bank’s legal team that “a pending request for review is an invalid basis for refusing to bargain” and constitutes an unfair labor practice, per NLRB standards.

“We have no choice but to file an unfair labor practice charge,” the CWA said in its letter to the bank’s lawyers. “We respectfully request that the company reconsider its unlawful course of action and fulfill its obligations to bargain in good faith and furnish the requested information to the duly certified representative for employees in the conduct management intake team.”

Wells argues in its December request for review to the NLRB, seen by American Banker, that the NLRB regional director’s certification of the union vote was “arbitrary and unsupported by precedent.” The bank claims that there were procedural flaws in the NLRB’s handling of the vote.

Diana Pena, a San Antonio-based investigations associate who voted to unionize the unit, said the group is frustrated by Wells’ tactics.

“They keep pushing that they’ll bargain in good faith, but they’re not doing it,” she said. “It’s going to be a challenge, but we’re sticking to it. We’re not backing down.”

The vote last fall by members of the compliance management intake team came shortly after the bank laid off 11 of the unit’s roughly four dozen employees. The organizing group accused the bank of engaging in unfair labor practices at that time as well.

Wells denied the allegation that employees were cut due to union-organizing efforts. Bloomberg News was first to report on the conduct management intake team’s unionization efforts, the layoffs and the earlier unfair labor practice charge.

The crux of the bank’s argument in the current dispute is that there were flaws in the voting process, due to eight of the unit’s recently laid-off employees casting votes. The bank challenged the votes, but the challenge wasn’t resolved before the tally was counted. Although the union was approved by a five-point margin even without counting the laid-off employees’ ballots, Wells said the challenge should have been resolved before the count.

The NLRB issued a proposed stipulation to accept that the laid-off employees’ votes wouldn’t count, but Wells declined to accept the terms because the stipulation didn’t address the previously filed unfair labor practices claim regarding the layoffs. The bank said that the NLRB then approved the stipulation without its agreement.

Wells said in its request for review that the stipulation should be reversed and “the matter returned to the region for further processing.”

In an email sent to the unit’s employees on Thursday, a senior director at the bank wrote: “We continue to believe that the NLRB process, honoring both your individual and our company’s rights, will help us navigate a clear path forward.”

The conduct management intake team plays a notable role at Wells, especially as the bank has wrestled with the aftermath of various compliance scandals.

The bank appears to be making progress in resolving its longstanding regulatory problems. In the last month, financial regulators have lifted three of the bank’s consent orders — leaving five still outstanding, including the asset cap Wells has been shackled by since 2018.

Pena said she and fellow members of the conduct management intake team want to unionize due to concerns about the bank sending jobs overseas, benefits and salaries not rising in line with the cost of living and changes in their job protocols.

In September, 27 pro-union employees said in a letter to Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf that the group was facing “staffing issues, a lack of transparency in enterprise policies, inconsistent training and job-security concerns.”

“We respect our employees’ rights to vote for or against union representation, and we will honor the outcome of any certified election,” a Wells spokesperson said in December, before the vote was certified.

Scharf said last spring that the company believes employees are best served by working with the bank, rather than unionizing. More than 20 of the bank’s 4,000-plus branches have unionized in the last year, according to organizers.