Thread regarding U.S. Bank layoffs

Equal nothing at this place. Leaders have been told to cut down on merit so now even meaningful performance will likely get no raise. What’s the incentive to even submit goals and meet them? Nothing.

@zj In relation to my specific case, not likely.

However I do recommend to anyone who feels the company may have violated employee protection laws, to speak to an employment law firm who offers free consultations. The more individual information they receive, the better chance for employer patterns/practices to be identified for a collective lawsuit, whatever the case may be.

@ac 100% agree

If you are concerned about disparities and/or you are pursuing advancement, don't let embarrassment, shame, ego, or leadership gaslighting prevent you from having candid, mutually respectful compensation discussions with your peers.

Ask about each other's professional backgrounds, education, certifications, who at the company you connect with, etc. Reach out to colleagues in different orgs and discuss what messaging you receive from your leaders related to promotion cycles, promotion criteria, merits, bonuses, etc. Schedule a quarterly touch base to share any new insights gained.

Knowledge is power and this is how I successfully made moves at USB. Personally, it was all for naught as my morals won't permit me to join the higher ranks of senior leadership. The corruption at the top is a hard pass for me, just as my professional ethics are not the qualifying criteria they're looking to promote. I only regret not having candid career discussions with my peers earlier, so I wouldn't have sacrificed as much as I did climbing the corporate ladder.

@zf any chance of making it a more broader case (like a class action lawsuit)? I’m sure many others would join in.

@a5
"Management labels this added work "alignment," not a scope change even when the responsibilities are entirely new to the impacted employee and come with no training, guidance, or adjusted expectations.
Calling it alignment doesn't change the reality that the work is new, unsupported, and uncompensated."

I'm in the process of drafting the concise description of this USB leadership strategy to my employment law attorney and this is spot on. Thank you!

I worked in a business line, had 3 times the responsibility and people to support as my male peer, and I made less. He told me that he had pretty limited experience in what we were managing and I was training/onboarding him so he assumed when he brought it up that he was lowballed. When my peer recognized how much more he was making he laughed it off and said I should negotiate. If you’ve ever tried to negotiate at USB you know how that works. At first I told myself it would all work out, the pay would catch up. In the end I felt that my male boss took advantage of my desire to grow within the organization. Thanks KH!

Huge pay gaps and disparities within Risk, specifically CBB Risk under Melanie Bargo and Arjit.

My team went through what they called a "transformation" and we were informed by our managers and leaders that HR did a review to identify pay discrepancies and "align" us with peers doing equitable work. That turned out to be a LIE! Piled up and doubled the work and expectations without any pay increase. Worst part, they pulled in new team members who were already at a higher pay grade and comp and did no such adjustment. Then added managers without any compliance experience or knowledge required for the job.

Interesting. Just because this is so wide spread doesnt mean its right. It may mean we accepted it and haven't raised the right concerns to right the wrong. They manipulated loyal employees but we are waking up and realizing the loyalty, respect and ethical standards we give them isnt reciprocated. We are tired and deserve what is fair and equitable

This is why open communication with peers about pay is so important.

This is especially true in the Digital Platforms team under Dominic and honestly, it’s been the case since day one, back when Derek White was running the Digital Office. Female product managers and agilists consistently get handed the messiest, most complex products with bloated scope, endless requirements, and “just a casual full architectural overhaul,” which of course means herding cats across risk, compliance, and half the org. Meanwhile, male product managers regularly outsource their actual jobs to agilists and engineers, then resurface at the eleventh hour to sprinkle in some corporate buzzwords and aggressively flatter leadership.

And let’s not even get started on the pay and title circus among agilists and scrum masters. There’s a huge disparity—thanks in large part to the COVID-era digital gold rush, when people were fast-tracked into wildly inflated titles while long-tenured employees were conveniently ignored, left sitting at lower levels with lower pay.

I continue to see work disproportionately piled onto women while male coworkers (often at higher pay grades- this is a fact not a guess) do less or have their work reassigned. Asking why isn’t encouraged; it’s met with shutdowns or hostility rather than transparency.

Management labels this added work as “alignment,” not a scope change even when the responsibilities are entirely new to the impacted employee and come with no training, guidance, or adjusted expectations. Calling it alignment doesn’t change the reality that the work is new, unsupported, and uncompensated.

At the same time, leadership has confirmed pay inequities between remote and RTO employees doing the same jobs, with different compensation pools for identical roles. Huh?

Equity isn’t just about titles or salary bands. It’s about scope, workload, and accountability. When women (or any protected class) are expected to take on more, question less, and accept pay disparities, it’s hard to understand how this isn’t crossing legal and ethical lines. If this isn’t illegal, it should at least raise serious questions about how organizations define fairness and compliance. The problem isn’t performance, it’s a system that normalizes imbalance instead of fixing it.