Over the last month, Jamie Dimon has rapidly emerged as one of the most vocal proponents of the return-to-office movement. During a recent appearance at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, the J.P. Morgan Chase CEO could not help but complain—again—about workers who were pushing back on RTO policies.
When fielding a question about his recent colorful remarks on RTO, Dimon noted that it was only “people in the middle” who were unhappy about going into the office. “If you work in a restaurant, you’ve got to be in. You all may not know this, but 60% of Americans worked the whole time,” he said, seemingly in reference to the pandemic. “Where did you get your Amazon packages from? Your beef, your meat, your vodka? Where did you get the diapers from?”
“You got UPS and FedEx and manufacturers and agriculture and hospitals and cities and schools and nurses and sanitation and firemen and military. They all worked,” he added. “It’s only these people in the middle who complain a lot about it.”
Dimon has had a lot to say about workers who are reluctant to return to the office. This month, J.P. Morgan started requiring that employees come into the office five days a week, officially ending its hybrid work policy.
The new mandate—which was announced at the start of the year and echoes a broader shift across corporate America—stirred up discontent among the company’s workforce and even prompted an online petition making a case for hybrid work, which has since drawn nearly 2,000 signatures. Dimon, however, was quick to dismiss employee concerns. “I don’t care how many people sign that fucking petition,” he said during an internal meeting, according to a recording obtained by Reuters. “Don’t give me the shit that ‘work from home Friday’ works.”
Dimon added that the company would not allow managers to approve or make decisions about in-office requirements. “There is no chance that I will leave it up to managers,” he said. “Zero chance. The abuse that took place is extraordinary.” He also argued that employees did not pay attention during Zoom meetings and called for J.P. Morgan to increase efficiency by 10% through through cutting down on training sessions and the number of documents produced by the company—as well as meetings. (J.P. Morgan was not immediately available for comment.)
Like plenty of other CEOs, Dimon has embraced a full return to the office under the pretext of promoting collaboration and productivity. But Dimon has been far more blunt and outspoken than some of his peers—not to mention more dismissive of dissent from employees. While he later apologized for the language he used in the internal meeting, noting that he should “never curse” and “get angry,” Dimon has continued to double down on his stance that employees should work from the office full-time.
“I completely respect people that don’t want to go to the office all five days a week—that’s your right,” he told CNBC recently. “But they should respect that the company is going to decide what’s good for the clients [and] the company, not an individual. So they can get a job—and I’m not being mean—they can get a job elsewhere.” Dimon also referenced the petition again, though he struck a different tone than he did when speaking to his staff. “There’s a petition,” he said. “And they have the right to feel that way. But we’re not going to change. We’re going back to the office.”
Of course, as J.P. Morgan employees have returned to the office this month, they have reportedly encountered many of the same issues facing workers at other companies, from limited workspace to noisy colleagues. And despite his open disdain for remote work, Dimon does seem to believe in its efficacy for certain workers—namely, the people staffing J.P. Morgan’s call centers. “We did it to see if they’d be effective,” he said at the Stanford event. “They’re highly effective. They work from home.”
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