December 22, 2017

Wells Fargo Accidentally Admits the Truth: The Republican Tax Bill Has No Connection to its $15 Minimum Wage

Richard B. Levine/Levine Roberts/Newscom via ZUMA

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Sucking up to Donald Trump is tricky business. On Wednesday Wells Fargo announced that it was raising its minimum wage thanks to the passage of the Republican tax bill:

Wells Fargo to Raise Minimum Hourly Pay Rate to $15, Target $400 Million in 2018 Philanthropic Contributions, Including Expanded Support for Small Businesses and Homeownership

Company announces initial actions to support economic growth with tax reform

“We believe tax reform is good for our U.S. economy and are pleased to take these immediate steps to invest in our team members, communities, small businesses, and homeowners,” said President and CEO Tim Sloan.

That press release is a little vague. Was Wells really doing all this because of the tax bill? A pair of LA Times reporters called the press office to find out:¹

Asked by the Times to clarify the connection Wednesday, Wells Fargo spokesman Peter Gilchrist said there was none….Asked directly to confirm that the pay raises were not a result of the tax bill, Gilchrist said, “That is correct.”

But wait:

On Thursday, Gilchrist backtracked. “We believe tax reform is good for our U.S. economy and are pleased to raise our minimum hourly pay to $15 as a result.” …He would not comment on the reason for the earlier statement.

Needless to say, Wells Fargo is in a heap of trouble these days over a series of scandals that never seems to stop, so flattering the president is just good business. Maybe it won’t help, but it can’t hurt.

In any case, I think we can take this as a case study in what’s really going on with all those companies announcing new initiatives thanks to the tax bill: they have nothing to do with the tax bill at all. It’s just business as usual. But they’re certainly eager to say it’s because of the tax bill. I suppose I would be too if I had a lot of business with the Justice Department or the SEC or the Pentagon.

¹Originally I had no link for this story, but now I do. After intense investigation, it appears that the latimes.com site automatically redirects me to beta.latimes.com, which doesn’t quite work yet and didn’t have this story available. That’s why I couldn’t find it. It’s not surprising for a beta site to have bugs, but it’s not clear why I’m unable to access the regular site.

Oh, and this is only on Firefox. It works fine on Chrome and Edge. I deleted all my latimes.com cookies, but that didn’t help. The investigation continues.

Later: I went in and removed all site-specific data for both latimes.com and beta.latimes.com. That did the trick.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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