Wells Fargo shareholders rejected a proposal Tuesday to appoint a third-party monitor that would have examined whether the bank was impeding employees’ unionization rights, according to American Banker.
Joanne Cretella, a Wells employee in Prospect, Connecticut, introduced the now-rejected proposal, calling for a third party to “evaluate management interference when employees seek to form or join trade unions.” Management imposed pressure and “anti-union propaganda” when Cretella and her co-workers were organizing, she said.
At the bank’s annual shareholder meeting Tuesday, Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf also pushed back at employee unionization efforts, saying that it’s important to “make clear that we continue to believe that our employees are best served by working directly with Wells Fargo and our leadership team.”
“We intend to exercise our right to speak with our employees about these matters to make sure that they make informed decisions," he said, according to American Banker.
Wells workers at a handful of the bank’s 4,000 branches have made a splash in recent months by voting to unionize. Wells became the first bank of its size to have a unionized workforce in December when a branch in Albuquerque, New Mexico, voted to join Wells Fargo Workers United.
Workers at branches in Daytona Beach, Bradenton and Apopka, Florida; Wilmington, Delaware; Virginia Beach, Virginia; Apex, North Carolina; Pomona, New Jersey; Cedar Hill, Texas; and Prospect have also since voted to join WFWU, according to the Committee for Better Banks, which is associated with the WFWU unionization efforts.
Worker concerns revolve around issues such as understaffing and compensation, both of which were called out by Cretella in her proposal.
Scharf said Tuesday that Wells has “numerous places … where we seek out employee opinions, and they carry a substantial amount of weight.”
“The voice of the employee inside the company is something that's very important to the management team,” he said.
A Wells spokesperson told Banking Dive that a “small number of employees within our community of more than 230,000 Wells Fargo employees around the country have voted in favor of union representation.”
“We continue to believe our employees are best served by working directly with the company and its leadership. We value direct engagement with our employees,” the spokesperson said.
Shareholders also rejected a proposal put forth by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli seeking an annual report on the bank’s efforts to thwart harassment, Bloomberg Law reported. DiNapoli sought to have the bank report certain metrics, including how many pending harassment complaints the bank faces on an annual basis.
Shareholders approved, however, Wells’ executive compensation plan, including Scharf’s $4.5 million raise to $29 million.
He told shareholders that Wells has been investing in risk and control infrastructure since the 2016 fake-accounts scandal, Reuters reported. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency recently lifted a consent order against Wells stemming from the scandal. Eight OCC consent orders against the bank remain, as does the $1.95 trillion asset cap, imposed by the Federal Reserve.
The Committee for Better Banks did not return a request for comment on Scharf’s remarks or Cretella’s failed proposal.
