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A union representing Wells Fargo employees has sent an open letter to company leadership demanding change after a worker died in her cubicle and was not found for four days.
Denise Prudhomme, 60, was found dead in a Wells Fargo office in Tempe, Arizona at the end of August, as reported by HR Grapevine at the time.
Wells Fargo released an initial statement stating it was “deeply saddened by the loss of our colleague,” adding it was "committed to the safety and wellness of our workforce” and would review its internal procedures after the tragic incident.
But now Wells Fargo Workers United-CWA, a union representing Wells Fargo employees, has publicly called for the company to change its safety culture & procedures as well as its return-to-office (RTO) policy.
Wells Fargo union: “We demand better transparency and safety precautions”
In a letter sent to nationwide company leadership Monday signed by over 200 employees, the statement reflected on the tragic and untimely death of Prudhomme.
“We are saddened and outraged by the devastating tragedy and loss of our coworker, Denise Prudhomme… This tragedy reminds us why it is so important for us to have a true voice and exercise our rights at work,” it said.
The union went on to point out the bitter irony of Prudhomme’s death going unnoticed for four days, despite the level of monitoring the company has placed on employees.
“Wells Fargo monitors our every move and keystroke using remote, electronic technologies - purportedly to evaluate our productivity - and will fire us if we are caught not making enough keystrokes on our computers,” the letter claimed. “However, Denise went unnoticed at her desk for four days. The contradictory nature of electronic surveillance versus an unnoticed death sheds light on the reality of what it means to be a worker at Wells Fargo.”
The letter calls on Wells Fargo leadership to comply with four demands that the union believes will prevent similar incidents from happening again: Better transparency, improved safety precautions that are not punitive or cause further stress for employees, a reevaluation of the company’s “hub city” relocation plan and return to office policy, and to have a seat at the table when the company determines how employees can be as effective and productive as possible.
“The solution is not more monitoring, but ensuring that we are all connected to a supportive work environment instead of warehoused away in a back office,” the union wrote.
The letter also claimed staff were not informed of the death for days, claiming it was a “tragic example of our employer’s lack of transparency.”
It has been signed by over 200 unionized Wells Fargo employees, some of whom left comments alongside their signature posing direct questions to company leadership or sharing their experience of the tragic incident.
One employee, named Rikki, said they were told to carry on with “business as usual and to get back to work.”
Another employee called Meghan, who also worked at the Tempe office in Arizona, added that Wells Fargo’s work culture has heightened their stress to dangerous levels.
“I feel like I’m dying every day right now and I’ve stated this to my manager multiple times with it being disregarded until their boss complained I haven’t been working the same hours as I was before,” they claimed. “You’re either killing yourself or you’re not enough.”
Employees criticize Wells Fargo’s RTO mandate
Wells Fargo Workers United-CWA also used the letter to call the company’s RTO policies into question, suggesting that being called back into the office despite being the only person on her team in the Tempe office could have contributed to the time it took to discover her body.
Wells Fargo’s RTO policy in its banking branch reportedly requires staff to work from an office even if their team members and supervisors are all based elsewhere.
“These arbitrary new policies are being imposed on many of us who have worked fully remote for years - long before the COVID pandemic began,” the letter agues. “Further, Wells Fargo’s new “hub city” policy is forcing thousands of employees to uproot their families or lose their jobs at an unspecified date.”
The union said that RTO policies and forcing staff to relocate to a hub city was causing “additional heightened stress for scores of employees working out of smaller offices for no apparent reason, and certainly not for the benefit of us employees.”
“Let's set the record straight about the office Denise was in,” one employee named Mike wrote in their comment, again highlighting that Prudhomme’s work arrangements possibly contributed to the time it took to discover her body and calling for change to the company’s RTO policy.
“The office is a ghost town, always has been. There's no need to have employees in low touch point roles in office period.”
Some employees emphasized the stress brought about by policy changes like the RTO mandate.
“Our team also lost another co-worker last year,” wrote Eden, another Arizona-based worker. “She was young and being put through a tremendous amount of stress due to policies such as those named that don't make sense. Please stop treating employees as disposable.”
