Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

@10t I was in this boat. I had 24 years of service. Location closing, and was working from home on ada. Here's what happened.

1. Had to reinterview for my own job.
2. Had to let them know if I was going or not by a certain date or be laid off.
3. If I went, severance would be forfeited, and i was expected to be there by a certain date or be subject to disciplinary action up to including termination.

After talking with 3 sources, if i could remain on remote nobody really could give me a straight answer.

OCC and HR approved, management didn't know, asked recruiter they didn't know they spoke with the now defunct ada team.

Ada comes back with even if everyone signs off that they (ada team) can deny a request anyway. After so many times, even if it had been approved and your condition remains the same. You also have to live within 50 miles of the new location to be able to still use it.

...And I had a nasty phone call with one of their agents telling me I shouldn't be using my medical condition for an excuse to not want to rto and after a while they'll quit approving it because they'll get tired of having to keep approving it and added a comment that nobody wants to keep going back to the Dr asking for notes that'd would make the Healthcare teams upset after awhile.
So even if a note was valid we'd stop accepting them anyway and you'd have to rto as it's not permanent.

I never fully understood because ada and Location strategy are separate. Which to me is shady and misleading. Should still be able to use despite that stipulation. I dont see what a location has to do with a disability. Thats discrimination two ways location and health. Possibly three if you're 40 and up.

So the day came and the recruiter needed an answer to either accept the offer or leave with severance. (Too big a risk accepting and not be able to stay remote, start incurring extra expenses for travel, no raise offset costs etc.) The new location was a 100 miles away...So after 24 years I pulled the plug.

@11a guess all my flirting with my boss didn't really help I guess. Since about 2019 and ended up being laid off anyways. Lost all that time chasing that married woman.
Went from liking all my posts to completely doing a 180 and blocking me and setting boundaries.

@cm well ding ding all people on ada and on the docket for layoffs...that should be highly questionable.
Thats a protected class.

@118 in these cases where ada things are active for someone...they ought not be included in a layoff. They really are running the risk for an ada suit. Im surprised that hasn't happened yet.

ANY situation where an accommodation is involved should be handled very carefully. And that stipulation about the mileage and hub location is discriminatory in itself. Not everyone can live in the same radius and disability backed by a doctor's note suddenly does not become invalid because they (wf) determines that location strategy and accommodations are separate.

@11b they wouldn't let me....I tried getting a permanent accommodation and it'd a life long chronic disease and they said I couldn't use it unless I'd live 50 miles of a hub and they only allow it a handful of times. I'd have to come in anyway despite multiple Dr notes. Wf hates wfh.

@d3 They should be thanking those of us with IBS for not coming into the office and stinking up the entire floors, IMO.

@dg People who do a great job and are well liked still get targeted for layoffs. Also, people with disabilities tend to be disproportionately excluded by other employees and judged to a higher standard due to unconscious bias, making it more difficult for disabled people to even have the opportunity to do their jobs well and to be well liked.

@da That is your perception. In reality, it was likely that people were genuinely experiencing medical issues that needed accommodation, and simply had issues that varied day to day. How would you even suspect that people were “lying and scamming” as you say without you crossing boundaries and invading their privacy by monitoring their personal lives? That’s incredibly creepy and ableist. How are you personally even able to gauge the severity of a person’s disability when you are not a trained medical provider?

@e7 did they really do this to multiple of us? I was laid off the day my accommodation was set to be renewed.

@p2 I’ve had a WFH accommodation for over 6 years now with no issues. I do live within range of a hub but there’s talk of that hub going away next year so I guess we’ll see what happens. Also, the accommodations team at WF no longer exists and everything goes directly through MetLife. I felt like I had a lot of pushback with the WF team trying to make things difficult for me. MetLife was slower but the process was simpler.

@OP in regards to the comment on team members getting laid off, are older, and I have to agree. I was one of them along with 2 other team members close to retirement age. While the 20-30+were not displaced as fast. I went thru 4 different managers in 4months. Was ridiculous. And of course part of your package is a document sharing an average of ages that were displaced and not displaced. And did some analysis and it did come out that team members in their upper 50+ were the largest group displaced that round anyways.. got to remember if some who has been with the company for years and years that accumulates to more yearly payout in pit. But if you lay them off before the 25+years then the company doesn’t have to pay more to pto. If the team member wants to continue working at wells. Plus there is the cash balance keeps on accumulating as well, the longer you work, older you are more money is involved.

@f5 it won't happen because he has wealth and will be okay but I'm sure he wouldn't like it if someone took his livelihood away.

@dg I obviously wasn't well liked.
Wasn't fought for to stay on, and attempting to contact my former manager now, they won't even speak to me to say hello.

Actually that had been going on for some time. Seems as soon as I said wasn't going to the new location they started ostracizing me. Which is infact a form of bullying.

They should have still spoken to me and remained friends with me on social media. Whatever happened to being civil with one another?? Adults people. You'd think someone in their 50s would understand that. Show and give people grace. You're supposed too right??

@d8 I was 43 and had a continual HR approved accommodation to wfh full time. Location strategy came around and they had to know if I was going to relocate, I said I couldn't and was informed I was going to be displaced.

After checking with several sources before deciding to just be laid off, they the accommodation team said my accommodation was no good after a certain (unspecified) number of times whether not my condition improved or stayed the same.... And even to be able to use it, you have to live within 50 miles of a hub.
I live 100 miles at that point with no intention of moving and I physical can't because I have to take frequent bathroom breaks so traveling would have been detrimental to my health...

I had no choice though, had they be willing just let me stay on wfh when the building closed we' been okay. Business as usual and I'd still have a job.

@e6 out of tens of thousands it's so deafening that not anything is heard in the news about the fact that they are laying off every two weeks, as if that's normal. That isn't normal, that should be raising some red flags...
I don't see any other company doing that.

That's what I noticed as well.
But worse, termination instead of layoff

The reality is that Shart wants all domestic workers gone, especially those that were here before he became CEO. Those employees are particularly problematic in his mind because they remember how good of a place to work it was prior to Shart, and because he views them all as tainted by scandal. Young, old, ADA, doesn't matter, he wants us all gone. I'm sure his sick mind would get pleasure from watching his minions turn against each other as we see in this thread. Infighting serves his interests because it helps drive attrition. In reality it's all of us against Hudson Yards. Every other division is a distraction or fabrication.

@dg if I could allow to put a name from that team i would who told me I couldn't use my accommodation only a set number of times (didnt say how many) but I won't.

Severance has been paid out so maybe I should.

@dg I worked in a dept in COO and was told my manager in all these talks that COO operates differently than other areas of the bank and that is was a little easier to get an accommodation etc. Who knows if that was accurate or not.
I still was laid off after my accommodation ran out. Which I think that's stupid. Chronic life long issue impact a major life function. Should be a one and done, set for permanent wfh if you need it.

I tried this approach, and everyone was on board with it and okay except the accommodations team.

They said all over a conversation that they can only give allow the accommodation so many times until they flat out denying it despite being backed with medical notes and even if it had been approved previously. Then I'd have to rto anyway with all that going on.

To add further i was told they would quit accepting notes because 'nobody wants to keep going to the Dr to get renewals, and we'd get tired of approving it, so we will deny it, you shouldn't use an ada accommodation to avoid rto expectations.'

I had to ask all these questions because I was faced with rto to Charlotte somehow get down there without having major episodes or be displaced. I took the severance, but reading all this. It ticks me off quite a bit. I was and many others I'm sure cheated out of a job over something like this.

The reality is that nobody other than those at the top of the food chain has any idea whatsoever about the demographic makeup of the tens of thousands that have been laid off. Using the few people you know as a representative sample of those thousands is the height of idiocy

@da it's like the enacted the Ada and they don't want people to use it of they need to. If they did, they think you're faking it.

I have several people on my very large team in COO who are ada and they continue to be spared from layoffs, mainly because they do a great job and well liked, so I don’t think that’s true.

@d3
I don’t think you should be guaranteed a job simply because you’re on accommodation. And anyway, in my department there was an insane amount of abuse of accommodations and FMLA. So much lying and scamming by employees.

The stated reasons for layoffs seem to be proxies for age. Location strategy applied to legacy footprint and remote workers skews heavily toward folks who are older. There were very few folks in my layoff cohort that were under 40. They showed where they retained a handful of remote workers that had the same mean age as the group they terminated, and I think that’s the check they do for impact. The true test, though, is whether the terminated group has a higher representation of protected classes than “the firm” as a whole.

@c4 it should remove you actually. People are on an accommodation for a reason. Legit medically backed doctor notes and history.
I've noticed though if you ever have to use it, people change how they act towards you. Which in itself horrible. Do you think I enjoy being at home writhing in pain from IBS issues?

Been saying that all along... location strategy, there needs to be an investigation in the legality of it. Particularly in the misrepresentation of how it's handled.
Can over ride a dr note, and be limited to within in 50 miles of a hub?
Not permanent, even though a chronic and life long issue persists?

Things that certainly need addressing.

The only layoffs I've seen that impact older individuals at Wells was at times when their entire position was eliminated. Any time I've seen layoffs where only a percentage of employees were laid off, the people picked were typically in their 30's to 40's. But that's just my experience. I don't use that to say WF targets 30-40 year olds. Unless you have access to all demographics of employees laid off, you can only assume based on the patterns you see in your small bubble.

@cn flat-out lie. I'm easily the 2nd oldest in my group and I'm our agentic go-to since nobody else has bothered to touch it beyond the required training. I also get more out of it than younger people because I have a longer attention span than a goldfish and understand how to craft effective prompts.

WF staffing tends to skew older to begin with. Plus, they want agentic skills and older people tend to be the most resistant. Keep in mind with discplacements they arent replacements--that is they are not putting a younger person in the seat. the seat goes away.

When you sign your severance agreement, you give up your right to sue.

There is a "risk review" but its mainly for liability/lawsuit risk. Almost all lawsuit risk is fixable with suitable "severance" payments.

Yes, they systematically make sure to fire a certain amount of undeserving people in order to avoid lawsuits.

With 80k gone over six years, this is not true.

I despise the entire plan, but any case involving individual selection (meaning the entire group wasn't let go), goes through a risk review - which looks for adverse selection trends to avoid targeting age, gender, physical ability, race, etc.

With the volumes WF has had, systemic issues would have been flagged if "only" older workers and those with ADA claims were being selected or were being targeted.

As stated many times prior on this site, being on a medical leave or having an accommodation does not remove you from the pool of layoff candidates.

This is not true.