On Monday, Jamie Dimon, who is the chief executive officer of JP Morgan Chase (JPM), said that unvaccinated staff at their New York offices might lose their jobs if they remain unvaccinated. Banks have been getting tougher about the vaccinated status of their staff as they return to work.
In an interview on CNBC, Jamie Dimon said that New York employees won’t be able to work in that office if they were not going to get “vaxxed”. He said that they were not going to pay employees “not to work in the office” although he stopped short of saying that they would be fired.
When the chief executive was asked whether the bank was looking at a hybrid policy in future wherein employees could divide time spent at office with time spent working at home, Dimon said that they didn’t have to “answer this right away.” He also said that about 97 percent of the employees of the bank who worked in the Manhattan office were already vaccinated.
JP Morgan is basing its vaccine policies for staff according to the region of operation. The company does not have the same policy across the nation. Dimon also said that they were “adjusting locally” as there were different laws and different requirements that were prevalent in cities, states and schools.
Earlier in December, the bank had sent a memo to its employees at the Manhattan office where unvaccinated employees were told that they had to work remotely while the bank formulated “alternative solutions.” This policy was enforced after New York City announced that business that did not require its employees to provide proof of vaccination had to enforce a policy of wearing masks.
The memo stated that it was unfair to make vaccinated employees wear a mask all day as over 90 percent of them had been vaccinated. It also stated that wearing masks would slow the bank’s progress towards “business normalcy.”
Last week Citigroup said that employees had time till January 14 to get vaccinated against COVID-19, following which they would be on unpaid leave and would be terminated by the end of January, unless they got an exemption.
