Union with little inroads at banks tries to organize Wells Fargo workers in Charlotte

On a recent Friday, more than 20 labor activists stood outside Wells Fargo operations in uptown and the university area of Charlotte, North Carolina, passing out flyers to employees about their right to form a union — a move sure to displease the bank bosses.

One picture on the flyer showed a group of smiling workers in Apex, the first North Carolina bank branch to join Wells Fargo Workers United, a National Labor Relations Board certified union that’s affiliated with longtime labor union powerhouse the Communications Workers of America.

The Committee for Better Banks, the group organizing the union drive along with the CWA, hopes that the nascent union movement can spread to Charlotte.

The city is an inviting target. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo has its largest employment base here, with about 27,000 employees. Activists are pushing to improve pay, staffing levels and benefits.

But Wells Fargo insists its staffers are better off dealing with management directly. And so far, the union movement has attracted only the smallest of fractions of the workforce. What’s more, labor experts say it’s rare for banks to have unions, especially in right-to-work states like North Carolina, which limit the impact of unions.

The first Wells Fargo union was formed in 2021.

“When (employees) don’t have a union, they’re left to go to their manager or HR alone and they have no power to get heard,” CBB Organizing Director Nick Weiner said. “When they collectively come together, they’re going to have some power.”

Supporters from the local CWA district targeted about 30 bank branches and a large call center while in Charlotte, according to organizing coordinator Christina Ronk.

Their goal is for large Wells Fargo offices to take notice of their work to unionize in Charlotte. But organizers said there’s no timetable for when they think their work might pay off. So far for now, several Wells Fargo employees in big Charlotte offices have expressed interest in having a union, according to Ronk.

She said there’s a “fear mentality” when it comes to speaking up at Wells Fargo, especially at call centers. Employees are afraid their jobs might be in jeopardy if they stand with the union, activists say.

It’s something Walter Haynes knows well in Raleigh, North Carolina. The Wells Fargo senior business execution administrator recently passed out flyers at a call center in Wake County.

“People have been afraid to even take a flyer,” he said. “And I can’t blame them. I understand why. The environment is not receptive to a union, from top-down.”

Wells Fargo declined an interview request from The Charlotte Observer to discuss the union activity.

Instead the company sent out a statement: “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.”

In December, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio and chair of the Senate Banking Committee, voiced support for the Wells Fargo union movement. He asked CEO Charlie Scharf if he supported it during an annual Wall Street oversight hearing.

Scharf indicated the answer was no. “And we do intend to exercise our right to speak with them to make sure they make an informed decision.”

Union locals at Wells Fargo

In December, workers at a Wells Fargo branch in Albuquerque, New Mexico, became the first to unionize.

There are now 10 locals in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, New Jersey, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia, and an election is pending for National City, California. More than 80 people are members — just a sliver of the bank’s total number of employees.

The Committee for Better Banks has a national email list of 4,350 Wells Fargo workers who have signed support forms over the past two years, Weiner said.

The process of forming a union starts with employees sending a petition to the NLRB.

An NLRB-supervised election is required to officially consider forming a union after a company is notified about it. The company is obligated to engage in collective bargaining if the majority of workers vote “yes” to forming a union.

The Wells Fargo branch in Apex became the first in the Carolinas to unionize, after an election there April 10.

Some of the positions in the six-person local include tellers and the branch operations coordinator, according to a filing with the NLRB. Employees there claim they are understaffed, according to a March letter sent to management about organizing.

Wells Fargo employees who joined the union also feel they are not getting paid enough, Weiner said, adding that return-to-office mandates are aggravating workers too.

Most employees are expected to be in the office three days a week and have the option to work remotely for the other two, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman said. Branch workers operate under a different schedule.

Under-staffing and stress to meet high expectations for sales are other worries, Weiner said.

Weiner said the Committee for Better Banks also has been contacted by workers from Charlotte-based banks Truist and Bank of America wanting to unionize, but there are no plans to try to organize workers there now.

Wells Fargo workers like Haynes are working on a strategy to go public with their Charlotte campaign. Literature is being passed out inside offices but a petition has not been sent to NLRB as of yet.

Unions rare at banks

Forming bargaining units in Charlotte will be a challenge because North Carolina is a right-to-work state without a strong union presence, said Eric Heberlig, a UNC Charlotte political science and public policy professor.

In right-to-work states, workers can choose to join a union and pay a membership fee, but joining a union is not a condition of employment. (The dues for the Wells Fargo union are $1.30 per $100 earned.)

Many think about manufacturing, steel and auto plants for traditional unions, Heberlig said, but that’s changing, especially with a decline in those industries.

“(Unions have) moved into the public sector with government workers and more service employees like hotels, retail and things like that,” Heberlig said. But it’s still rare for unions to represent bank workers, Heberlig said.

The Wells Fargo union has to show how unions can benefit bank workers, he said.

“That’s going to make it a lot harder for current bank workers,” Heberlig said, “because they don’t have those references of people who know the industry and talk to them in ways to show that they understand their workplace.”

But it’s possible Wells Fargo call center workers can get guidance from other unions outside of banking. Heberlig said the job duties may be similar regardless if it’s related to banking or something else.

“You would have someone at another unionized call center who can talk to someone from a Wells Fargo center and say our call center works better because we unionized,” he said.

The sprawling 157-acre Customer Information Center complex off W.T. Harris Boulevard in northeast Charlotte has more than 10,000 workers on the site, the Observer previously reported.

Union activists acknowledge that it’s a major undertaking to raise awareness of their work, especially when compared to the smaller sites where they previously have found some success.

“I’m hoping with this flyer blitz that we will get some great leads in Charlotte,” Ronk said, “and build some good Wells Fargo activists willing to come out into the sunlight.”