UPDATE: This article includes additional context about the vote's significance and efforts to unionize workers at other banks.
A group of Wells Fargo workers who serve as gatekeepers for complaints from the megabank's customers and employees has voted to form a union.
The 21-16 vote, which was certified Tuesday by the National Labor Relations Board, marks the first successful drive to organize members of a nonbranch work unit at Wells. Over the last year, workers at 23 of the bank's more than 4,000 branches have unionized, according to labor organizers.
"Today is a historic moment for making a real difference at Wells Fargo, one of the largest banks in the country," Roslynn Berkland, who works in the unit that voted to unionize, said in a written statement that was sent by a spokesperson for Wells Fargo Workers United.
Berkland wrote that she and her colleagues "are standing shoulder-to-shoulder" with the branches where Wells employees have previously won union elections. "We look forward to creating an open dialogue with Wells Fargo to improve working conditions in our department," said Berkland, an investigations associate at the bank.
A Wells Fargo spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement last week, before the vote's outcome was certified, the bank's spokesperson said: "We respect our employees' rights to vote for or against union representation, and we will honor the outcome of any certified election."
The employees in the unit that voted to unionize represent a fraction of Wells Fargo's 226,000-person workforce. Still, the vote represents an incremental win for labor organizers — and an incremental loss for the bank — amid efforts to unionize branch employees, call center workers and other Wells employees.
The unit that voted to unionize is known as the conduct management intake group. Its members, who are spread out across the country, are responsible for doing early stage reviews of complaints from Wells Fargo customers and employees.
As Wells Fargo continues to contend with the fallout from various scandals, the conduct management intake group has a sensitive role. Union supporters in the unit have said they routinely review customer allegations of improper denials of mortgage modifications, surprise overdraft fees and unlawful repossession of vehicles.
Shortly before workers in the unit voted this fall, Wells Fargo laid off 11 of the unit's roughly four dozen employees. Most of the employees who lost their jobs were union supporters, according to workers who support the union. The organizing group Wells Fargo Workers United accused the $1.9 trillion-asset bank of engaging in unfair labor practices.
Wells denied that allegation, saying that the layoffs were not connected with union-organizing efforts.
After the unit's employees voted on whether to unionize, Wells Fargo challenged ballots that had been cast by eight of the recently laid-off workers. Union organizers eventually dropped their objection to Wells Fargo's challenge, saying the union had prevailed by a five-vote margin even without counting the eight contested ballots.
The union supporters have pointed to a variety of issues as prompting their push to organize. Among their complaints: the revocation of work-from-home privileges against the recommendations of employees' doctors and the offshoring of jobs to India.
In a Sept. 5 letter to Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf, pro-union employees in the conduct management intake group also pointed to what they described as "staffing issues, a lack of transparency in enterprise policies, inconsistent training and job-security concerns."
"We have persevered, but alarmingly, in the last few months those challenges have become near insurmountable," a group of 27 workers in the unit wrote to Scharf.
Scharf has said that Wells Fargo's leaders believe the company's employees are best served by working directly with the bank, rather than unionizing.
"We intended to exercise our right to speak with our employees about these matters to make sure that they make informed decisions," Scharf said at the bank's annual shareholder meeting in April.
Few U.S. banks have unionized workforces — one exception is Beneficial State Bank in Oakland, California — but labor organizers are interested in expanding their efforts beyond Wells Fargo.
Nick Weiner, organizing director at the union-backed Committee for Better Banks, which is leading the unionization push at Wells Fargo, said in a recent interview that he hears all the time from bank workers elsewhere who want to unionize.
Those inquiries currently exceed the Committee for Better Banks' capacity to handle them, Weiner said.
The finance sector has low uptake for unions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2023 union membership report. The unionization rate for finance was 1.2% last year, the report said.
