JWA: Issues

The RTO mandate of early 2025 brought us together, but here’s an abstraction of what our members have brought up.

Top Issues – Per Survey Metric (so far):

• RTO is bad for workers: commute, noise, expense, caregiver needs, disability, neurodivergence, etc.
• Pay is not keeping up: with cost of living, to say nothing of record profits. The math isn’t mathing.
• Transparent and Fair ADA / Reasonable-Accommodation Process: The bank seems to be ignoring its legal obligation to provide medically-indicated accommodations until someone hires a labor lawyer. That’s unethical, and a point where we can probably score some early progress through collective action.

Note: It’s not our job to make a business case for our demands: Of course they’d cost money. That’s why the company tries to fight them. But without workers, there is no business. We deserve a fair say in these matters.

Universal Issues:

• Working Conditions:
  • Clean, Safe, Healthy Working Environment
  • Well-defined procedures that actually work
  • Regular, relevant, and effective training
  • Fair treatment from management
  • Reasonable accommodations for employees under the Americans with Disabilities Act and/or local equivalent
  • For remote-parking, will shuttles be available throughout the day for e.g. late arrivals / emergency departures?
  • Is there access to to adequate lunch facilities?
• Pay / Compensation and Advancement:
  • Fairness: Are fresh graduates making more than old hands? Are men making more than women for the same work? Am I paid much less than my peers?
  • Transparency: How can we tell the answers to the questions above?
  • Participation: The company keeps posting record annual profits over and over and over again. We did that. Record profits demand record pay!
  • Get rid of that filthy arbitration clause in the employment contracts!
  • When someone has the requisite skills and the experience, advancement should follow.
  • Skills-training needs to become a regular part of our job; not merely an optional extra.
• Benefits
  • Parking: Downtown, parking is an expensive challenge. At campuses, parking is not secure and often remote.
  • Child care: Your kid grows old on the Bright Horizons wait-list. Also, it’s comparatively expensive.
  • Meals, whether downtown or in campuses, are unreasonably expensive (or time-consuming, if prepared at home).
• Hours / Schedule
  • Some companies have had success with a 4-day work-week. Why not us? (Meetings expand to fill time?)
  • We’ve proven that hybrid/remote works great, regardless of what noise comes out of the CEO’s mouth. Bring it back!
  • The company wants to increase efficiency via modern technology. That should translate into less hours worked.
• Job Security
  • People should not be fired or disciplined for arbitrary or capricious reasons.
  • Performance Reviews need to be accurate and unbiased.
  • Stop offshoring our positions – or threatening to do it.
  • People get moved into new positions they didn’t sign up for. What recourse do we have?
• Environmental Stewardship
  • We talk a good game about the environment, so shouldn’t we get out of the fossil-fuels business?
  • Public Transit Benefit would get cars off the road – and help with parking.
  • EV chargers in corporate parking lots would encourage EV adoption.
  • Sustainability is Work-from-Home. (Hybrid model seems to be the sweet-spot for most.)
• Corporate Governance
  • Transparency: Lay bare the real reasons management chooses to do things.
  • Worker representation on the board

Focus by Job Category:

Different job categories will have different motivations to join together and militate for change. For example, software developers might be paid well compared to other professions, but face long hours, high stress, unrealistic deadlines, and poor guidance. Meanwhile, lock-box employees might have consistent hours but low pay and a dirty environment.

Differences here may ultimately delineate bargaining units – but that’s a future problem. Right now we’re looking to build community around commonality.