Wells Fargo to Beef Up Labor Relations Staff Amid Union Campaign

Wells Fargo & Co. is looking to expand its labor relations team as it gears up for workers’ drive to unionize the country’s fourth-largest bank.

The San Francisco-based company on June 20 posted an opening on its internal job board for a newly created labor relations director position. The director would report to Gerri Parker, Wells Fargo’s head employee relations, risk and regulatory governance executive, and have a team of five to seven people, according to the posting.

Parker and her team have been handling issues related to labor relations. A Wells Fargo representative declined to comment on the posting.

The new position comes as the company confronts the drive to organize workers at bank branches, call centers, and corporate offices under the Communications Workers of America. The Washington-Baltimore News Guild, which is affiliated with the CWA, represents employees of Bloomberg Law.

“It struck me as unusual and they’re planning for something, either to be aggressive or to be prepared in the event we’re successful,” Nick Weiner, the senior campaign lead at the Committee for Better Banks, an advocacy group that is helping to guide the Wells Fargo union campaign, said of the bank’s job posting.

Around 900 workers in 29 states are involved in the union campaign, the first mounted at a big US bank, organizers say.

“I do think it’s an indication that Wells Fargo is taking the potential for workers to successfully mount a union campaign seriously,” said Matthew Bodie, a University of Minnesota Law School professor and former National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) attorney, referring to the new labor relations director.

The job posting says the director would be responsible for designing and delivering a “labor strategies framework for practices, policies, and procedures” and represent the bank in labor-management disputes.

The director would also have to identify “emerging risks & trends, advise best practices to address risks, and strengthen the labor relations program,” among other responsibilities.

Companies with unionized workforces typically have an executive specifically charged with handling labor relations, said Rebecca Givan, a professor at Rutgers University’s School of Management and Labor Relations.

Companies facing unionization efforts, such as Starbucks Corp., also tend to set up dedicated labor relations teams, she added.

Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf told Congress in September 2022 that the bank will not remain neutral with respect to the unionization efforts.

Meanwhile, Wells Fargo is facing another unfair labor practice case filed June 14 with the NLRB.

In the filing, Cole Weber, a worker at Wells Fargo’s Hillsboro, Ore., call center, alleges that a manager stopped him from posting a pro-union flyer outside his cubicle.

Weber, who leads a team that handles Spanish-language complaints, said that his manager removed the flyer and claimed that pro-union flyers could only be posted inside a cubicle.

Weber disagreed with the manager’s claim, noting a settlement of an unfair labor practice claim related to posting flyers at a Utah call center.

Another Wells Fargo worker at the Hillsboro site filed a similar unfair labor practice claim in May.

“We respect employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act and do not tolerate retaliation of any kind. We just received the complaint and are closely reviewing it,” Wells Fargo said in a June 22 statement.

Wells Fargo is now facing five unfair labor practice claims related to the union drive.