John Stumpf defends his bank’s pay model at a company town hall meeting after an employee emailed him and cc’d 200,000 others at the bank about getting a raise.
Last month Wells Fargo employee Tyrel Oates wrote an email to company CEO John Stumpf asking for a $10,000 raise – not only for himself, but for each of the bank’s 263,500 employees. Oates copied about 200,000 Wells employees on the email.
Now almost a month later at the bank’s quarterly company town hall meeting, Stumpf defended Wells Fargo’s pay structure. During the meeting, he said he wanted to address something that had been in the media recently regarding Wells Fargo’s compensation, though he didn’t specifically speak to the email from Oates.
Stumpf described the bank’s pay model as competitive and said that 40,000 employees received a promotional raise last year, according to Market Watch.
In the email to Stumpf, Oates pointed out that Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest mortgage originator, has seen record profits, including $5.7 billion in the second quarter alone, and that Stumpf’s $19.3 million annual salary package was “more than most of the employees will see in their lifetimes.”
When news of Oates’ email hit the media, Wells Fargo responded with a prepared statement. “We provide market competitive compensation that combines base pay with a broad array of benefits and career-development opportunities for team members,” the bank said.
Oates’ current compensation is $15 per hour. His pay was $13 per hour when he started at the bank nearly seven years ago. During the same period, Stumpf’s annual compensation has increased by 40%.
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