Who’s the biggest advocate for remote work? Jamie Dimon believes he has the answer. The CEO of JPMorgan Chase claims that it’s primarily “people in the middle who complain a lot about it.” In January, the bank announced a mandate requiring employees to return to the office five days a week.
Dimon addressed the bank’s return-to-office (RTO) mandate during a recent interview at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. “If you work in a restaurant, you got to be in,” he stated, likely referring to the pandemic period when many frontline workers remained on the job. “Where did you get your Amazon packages from? Your beef, your meat, your vodka? Where did you get the diapers from?”
The JPMorgan Chase CEO, known for his outspoken critiques of remote work, emphasized the efforts of those who worked in-person throughout the pandemic. “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 elaborated. “It’s only these people in the middle who complain a lot about it.”
White-collar workers, who typically enjoy more flexibility regarding their work locations than frontline workers, have had mixed reactions to RTO mandates in recent years. Some employees have pushed back, questioned the requirements, or even decided to resign due to these policies. In January, JPMorgan Chase reiterated its mandate for employees to return to the office five days a week, beginning in March.
Dimon acknowledged that enforcing the RTO policy may lead some employees to leave the company, but he expressed that he is comfortable with that possibility. “I completely respect people that don’t want to go to the office all five days a week. That’s your right. It’s my right. It’s a citizen’s right,” he previously told CNBC. “But they should respect that the company is going to decide what’s good for the clients, the company, etc., not an individual.”
He also pointed out that one of his main reasons for wanting employees back in the office is to ensure that “younger people are being left behind.” Dimon added, “To have the younger people coming in but not their bosses, I have a problem with that too.”
JPMorgan Chase did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
