A union’s first contract generally takes over a year to broker after an election, but Starbucks’ negotiations saga has dragged on for so long that it became time for a rethink. Over three years after their first cafe unionized, both parties recently agreed to mediation, and baristas are more than frustrated over a lack of progress. Both parties also couldn’t also cross the finish line after nearly a year of mass negotiations for a “framework,” which was intended to be a template for 500+ individual cafe contracts.
Similar vibes are beginning to pop up after Wells Fargo became the first major U.S. bank to see branches unionize. According to the CWA’s Committee For Better Banks initiative, workers at 25+ out of 4,300 Wells Fargo branches have unionized, and negotiations began last November with Wells Fargo United-CWA aiming to secure a national contract for all unionized branches. Now, Wells Fargo might have taken a page from what Starbucks has been going through and decided to nix the national phase.
The banking giant has now declared their intent to negotiate separate contracts with each of the 25 unionized bank branches. It’s a strategy that the union is resisting with Wells Fargo reporting that CWA’s attorneys are ignoring a list of proposed bargaining dates specific to each location.
That union refusal is no surprise since a master contract could simplify matters for both sides, but Wells Fargo might feel that a master contract would take too long to achieve. Alternatively, the bank could be using this switch-up as a bargaining chip for CWA to lower their demands, since an individual-branch contract structure risks collapsed negotiations further down the line, which could heighten decertification risks for the union.
Wells Fargo hasn’t clarified its rationale for side-stepping national negotiations, but if push comes to shove later at the NLRB, it could face accusations of bad faith bargaining. This might not prove to be a risk worth taking with so much uncertainty at the Board, but we’ll see how that goes.
Either way, it’s clear that the bank would like to avoid falling further into a Starbucks-like situation, wherein hundreds of other branches could unionize while national negotiations potentially drag forth into infinity. Also like Starbucks, Wells Fargo is a canary in the coal mine due to being the “first” in an industry to be successfully infiltrated by a deep-pocketed union.
A few more related developments:
- Wells Fargo also recently saw a first non-branch location unionize when a group of investigators – who handle external complaints from customers and internal allegations on workplace issues – joined Wells Fargo Workers United-CWA.
- The NLRB alleged that Wells Fargo attempted to prevent “a fair unionization vote” due to workers at an Atwater, CA branch voting against the union shortly after a majority of workers signed cards.
Given the current paralyzed status of the NLRB, it’s hard to imagine a quick resolution on any of these issues, but we’ll be watching.
