The banking giant announced the elimination of 900 home loan jobs in November – but it’s continued to hire thousands overseas
When Wells Fargo announced in November that it was cutting 900 home lending jobs across the country, the bank blamed declining workload for the cuts. But an Iowa congresswoman has accused the bank of slashing the jobs just to ship them overseas.
Rep. Cindy Axne (D-Iowa) grilled Wells Fargo CEO Time Sloan about the layoffs during a Sloan’s testimony before the House Financial Services Committee last week, according to a report by The Des Moines Register. About 400 of the 900 home loan jobs slashed came from Des Moines, Iowa.
Axne said that her office was contacted by a laid-off Wells Fargo employee who was told that her job was being moved to India, the Register reported. In an application for assistance through a federal aid program, the former employee also said that Wells Fargo mortgage employees had traveled to India to train their own replacements.
“Are these recent layoffs really just you moving jobs overseas?” Axne asked Sloan at the hearing.
“No, that’s incorrect,” Sloan said.
Axne, however, pointed out that even as Wells Fargo slashes American jobs – the bank plans to eliminate up to 26,450 positions over three years – it continues to add jobs in other countries. The company has added more than 10,000 workers in India and the Philippines, and plans to hire up to 7,000 more Filipino workers, the Register reported.
In an interview with the Register, Axne said she wasn’t satisfied with Sloan’s denials.
“We’re still laying off people in our own back yard in this country when we’re shipping thousands of jobs over to another country,” Axne told the publication. “I think we need to keep the jobs here.”
