Top Wall Street bank executive stands firm on vaccine mandate after Supreme Court decision
While the US Supreme Court may have ruled against the OSHA coronavirus vaccine mandate affecting companies with more than 100 employees, some Wall Street executives are refusing to budge on their own rules requiring vaccination.
Among them is Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan Chase, America's largest bank by assets. The company operates nine offices, according to Forbes. The company claims that 97 per cent of its staff is vaccinated.
“To go to the office, you have to be vaxxed, and if you aren’t going to get vaxxed, you won’t be able to work in that office,” Mr Dimon told CNBC last week. “We’re not going to pay you to not work in the office … We want people to get vaxxed.”
Wall Street banks have generally taken a hard line on vaccination requirements, in some cases establishing requirements months before the government made vaccines mandatory for certain companies.
In light of a Supreme Court ruling striking down that mandate, many banks are refusing to lift their in-house rules.
Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo, in addition to JP Morgan, will all continue to require vaccination for their workers to come into the office.
Some banks are even offering incentives for their employees to get vaccinated. Bank of America is offering a $200 bonus to all employees who take the shot.
Other banks are even going so far as to mandate booster shots. Goldman Sachs will require boosters for all of its US employees by February 1.
Wells Fargo will require all of its employees to register their vaccination status with the company. Unvaccinated staff will have to submit to regular testing.
“Wells Fargo will continue our testing programme,” a bank spokesperson told Forbes. “We believe it’s the right thing to do for the safety of all employees and our customers.”
The most hard line restrictions are in place at Citigroup, which has extensive government dealings that makes some staff subject to federal employee vaccine rules. Citigroup is requiring all of its 65,000 employees to be vaccinated or be placed on unpaid leave, which began on 14 January.
The company said employees who refused to take the shot by the end of the month would be fired.
A report from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that “partisanship stands out as the strongest single identifying predictor of vaccine uptake”, with most Democrats supporting the shot, and many Republicans denouncing the vaccine, which was created under the administration of former President Donald Trump.
Mr Trump himself has celebrated the vaccine and openly admitted that he is both vaxxed and boosted, much to the chagrin of his base.
