Wells Fargo, teachers union split
Bank losing business over ties to NRA, guns
Wells Fargo’s financial relationship with gun-makers and the National Rifle Association has cost the bank its mortgage business with a major U.S. union.
The American Federation of Teachers on Thursday notified the San Francisco-based financial giant that it is dropping the bank as a recommended mortgage lender for the national education union’s 1.7 million members.
The action came after Wells Fargo spurned the union’s call to cut lending ties with or impose new restrictions on firearms business partners after the Feb. 14 shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan told AFT President Randi Weingarten in an April 3 letter obtained by USA TODAY that the best route to combating gun violence “is through the political and legislative process.” Although Sloan suggested a meeting or conference call to discuss the issue, the sides never got together.
Weingarten told USA TODAY that Wells Fargo sent signals loud and clear through “radio silence.”
“We can only assume that, in light of your silence and the NRA attacks, you have decided that the NRA business is more valuable to you than students and their educators are,” Weingarten told Sloan on Thursday in a letter obtained by USA TODAY.
The action represents a financial blow to the nation’s third-largest bank by assets. Wells Fargo’s mortgage program had been featured in the Union Privilege program on the AFT website, and roughly 1,600 member families received mortgages from the bank in 2017. In all, more than 20,000 AFT members currently hold Wells Fargo mortgages.
Representatives for Wells Fargo and the NRA did not respond to requests seeking comment Thursday afternoon.
The severed ties between union and bank ups the ante in efforts to change businesses’ policies about guns since the Florida high school massacre.