It’s something Walter Haynes knows well in Raleigh, North Carolina. The Wells Fargo senior business execution administrator recently passed out flyers at a call center in Wake County.

“People have been afraid to even take a flyer,” he said. “And I can’t blame them. I understand why. The environment is not receptive to a union, from top-down.”

Wells Fargo declined an interview request from The Charlotte Observer to discuss the union activity.

Instead the company sent out a statement: “A small number of employees within our community of more than 230,000 Wells Fargo employees around the country have voted in favor of union representation. We continue to believe our employees are best served by working directly with the company and its leadership.”

In December, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio and chair of the Senate Banking Committee, voiced support for the Wells Fargo union movement. He asked CEO Charlie Scharf if he supported it during an annual Wall Street oversight hearing.

Scharf indicated the answer was no. “And we do intend to exercise our right to speak with them to make sure they make an informed decision.”

Union locals at Wells Fargo

In December, workers at a Wells Fargo branch in Albuquerque, New Mexico, became the first to unionize.

There are now 10 locals in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, New Jersey, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia, and an election is pending for National City, California. More than 80 people are members — just a sliver of the bank’s total number of employees.

The Committee for Better Banks has a national email list of 4,350 Wells Fargo workers who have signed support forms over the past two years, Weiner said.

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