Bankers’ hours are not short enough for some, including Alaska’s only member of the House of Representatives. Rep. Mary Peltola came out in favor of a bankers’ union, in support of workers in the Wells Fargo branch in Bethel Alaska who have voted to join a union.
The average Wells Fargo worker in America makes $85,000 a year, with a $7,000 bonus.
But for Peltola, who has worked to organize everyone from baristas to Barbie, organizing white collar workers is the next thing: “Worker power doesn’t stop where the road system ends. I’m excited to see workers standing together in my hometown of Bethel,” Peltola said on X/Twitter.
In the past year, she has called non-union workers “scabs.”
The demand driving the unionization of the Bethel Wells Fargo workers appears to be all about money in the pocket, not in the bank vault. A teller in Bethel makes between $32,000 and $41,000 a year, and a new account representative makes as much as $44,000 a year. Nationwide, banks are starting to close branches, as more people do banking online.
In 2023, Wells Fargo shut over 300 bank branches, more than double the number closed by Chase and Bank of America. If the bank decides to close the Bethel branch, Bethel is also served by First National Bank of Alaska.
Peltola is supported by Big Labor and embedded her campaign headquarters in Juneau inside the public employee union offices.
