JPMorgan employee who questioned Jamie Dimon’s RTO mandate says he was fired—then told he could stay—after testy town hall – Yahoo
Source: Yahoo Entertainment
When Nicolas Welch snagged a front row seat at JPMorgan Chase’s town hall meeting in Columbus, OH on February 12, he wasn’t expecting any trouble. He was just a few feet away from Jamie Dimon, the bank’s chairman and CEO, who sat on stage to address roughly 1,000 employees in person and thousands more on Zoom.
Like some others at the bank, Welch is unhappy about a recent directive that has ordered all 317,233 JP Morgan Chase employees to resume working in the office five days a week starting next month. Currently, roughly 40% of JPMorgan Chase’s employees are on a hybrid schedule, where they can work from home two days a week.
Welch, an analyst in tech ops who has worked for JPM since 2017, says he is going through a divorce and is seeking flexibility to deal with family and childcare issues. “I want to do the job I love with flexibility to do it,” he told Fortune. (Welch for the time being has a reprieve. Polaris is JPMorgan Chase’s regional headquarters in Ohio and no date has been set yet for the return of their more than 12,000 employees.)
After a short introduction of Dimon, the town hall opened up for Q&A. Welch was ready. He was the third person picked to ask a question. He had spent weeks preparing his remarks, so he didn’t feel nervous addressing the JPMorgan Chase CEO at the town hall. Welch began by thanking Dimon for “listening to an old hillbilly like me,” before explaining how his team was composed of seven people that are located in different geographies, including India and Buenos Aires, and work in four different time zones.
“There is no way that being in an office makes any difference for us specifically. So, all I’m asking is that—I’m not suggesting you rescind such an order— but suggesting it be left up to managers of individual teams themselves on [the] necessity of an office workplace,” Welch said during the meeting, according to a recording obtained by Fortune. His coworkers applauded. But Dimon was not moved.
“That’s it? I’m going to give you a complete answer. There is no chance that I would leave that up to managers. Zero chance. The abuse that took place was extraordinary,” Dimon said. Dimon then complained of employees wasting time during Zoom meetings, and how headcount for JPMorgan Chase had ballooned by 50,000 in the last four to five years. “We don’t need all those people. We were putting people in jobs because people weren’t doing the jobs they were hired to do in [the] first place,” Dimon said.
Later in the meeting, Dimon also complained about a petition from some JPMorgan Chase workers who want the bank to rescind its RTO mandate. “I don’t care how many people sign that fucking petition,” Dimon said.
Following the conclusion of the 45-minute town hall, Welch (pictured above) says he was greeted with high-fives and “thank yous” from coworkers. But his day soon took an ominous turn, when he received a text from Garrett Monaghan, a Vice President – Branch HelpDesk. “I don’t know what the fuck you just did, but come to my desk immediately when that town hall ends. Please,” according to a message that was viewed by Fortune. Monaghan was Welch’s immediate supervisor in 2022 and 2023 and, though he is no longer his direct boss, they both work in Technology Employee Support Services, or TESS, a division of JPMorgan Chase.
When Welch got to the meeting with Monaghan, he says he found the VP standing in a small conference room, along with another executive, Jeffrey Todd Merrill, Vice President – Global Dedicated IT Support, who was seated. (Merrill was Welch’s boss from 2018 to 2021 but is no longer.) Welch says that Monaghan told him he had “just dragged our whole organization through the mud. Go and clean off your desk and get the fuck out of here,” Welch recalls.
“You think so?” Welch said, as he walked out of the room. Because he works remotely two days a week, he didn’t have much to carry, picking up his coat and headphones. Minutes later, he stood in the parking lot. “I’ve never been told to get the fuck out of the office before,” he said. (Monaghan declined to comment, and Merrill did not respond to messages or calls from Fortune.)
Welch didn’t know what to think. His current boss, Richard Cundiff, IT Support Customer Success Manager, had moved to Florida in January and wasn’t at the town hall. Welch texted him at 12:14 pm and told him that Monaghan had just “threatened my job, so I’ve been ordered home.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” Cundiff replied. Welch then told his boss that Monaghan had ordered him to clean off his desk and go home, according to messages viewed by Fortune. Cundiff did not reply.
Twenty minutes later, Welch had not received any further communication from Cundiff, so he texted him again and asked to speak to his boss, who was out on vacation. “She is currently out of the office, I will inform her in our next meeting,” Cundiff said.
For the next several hours, Welch sat in his home in Columbus convinced he was fired. That didn’t change until around 4:30
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