JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is pushing for his employees to be vaccinated despite the Supreme ... [+]
The U.S. Supreme Court may have ruled against employer vaccine mandates, but that hardly matters to Jamie Dimon and other Wall Street chiefs, who are standing firmly in favor of requiring staff to get the life-saving jabs.
“To go to the office, you have to be vaxxed, and if you aren’t going to get vaxxed, you won’t be able to work in that office,” Dimon told CNBC last week. The institution he leads, JPMorgan
The country’s biggest banks have long been loath to take political stands out of fear of alienating customers, investors and even some executives. But when it comes to vaccinations, which are generally favored by Democrats and denounced by many Republicans, Wall Street has taken a staunch position.
In some cases, the banks have had rules in place for months, and the institutions contacted by Forbes unanimously said they planned to stick with them no matter what the high court says. In addition to JPMorgan, Bank of America
Bank of America went with a carrot approach, offering a $200 bonus to all vaccinated staff.
Morgan Stanley is requiring all staff to be vaccinated in order to access its offices in New York City or Westchester County.
Goldman Sachs has announced booster shots will be mandatory for all U.S. employees as of Feb. 1.
Wells Fargo is requiring staff to register their vaccination status this month, with unvaccinated employees having to submit to regular testing, a decision unchanged by the court ruling.
“Wells Fargo will continue our testing program,” a bank spokesperson told Forbes. “We believe it’s the right thing to do for the safety of all employees and our customers.”
Citigroup has the most stringent rules. The New York-based banking giant first told staff to get vaccinated back in late October, citing its extensive work with the government that means that some employees would fall under a separate mandate for federal contractors that’s currently being challenged in the courts.
The country’s fourth-biggest bank went further by requiring all 65,000 employees to get vaccinated or be placed on unpaid leave on Jan. 14. If they still wouldn’t comply, Citigroup would fire them at the end of the month.
In a LinkedIn post Thursday, the day the court ruled, the firm’s head of human resources, Sarah Wechter, marked the deadline by announcing that 99% of the staff had been vaccinated. A spokesperson told Forbes that the bank is “expecting more to comply.”
In Thursday’s ruling, the high court blocked the Biden administration from enforcing mandated vaccine-or-testing programs for big employers like the Wall Street banks. It was a 6-3 vote, with all of the conservative justices in favor. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation report, 60% of Americans who are unvaccinated identify or lean Republican while of those unvaccinated, less than 20% say they’re either Democrats or Independents.
“Partisanship stands out as the strongest single identifying predictor of vaccine uptake,” the report says.
The banking titans have also had to take stances on returning to the office as new variants of Covid-19 have spread over the past two years. Many of the firms have delayed office openings several times since March 2020.
Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman took a different approach, forcing employees back to the office last Labor Day with threats of pay cuts. Last month in a CNBC interview, Gorman said he was wrong to do so.
The latest delays came earlier this month, with much of Wall Street, including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan, allowing staff to work from home during the omicron variant’s wave of new cases. JPMorgan is targeting a return to the office on Feb. 1, according to internal memos. The plan, unlike the vaccine mandate, is subject to change.
