Lessons from a secretly recorded, back-to-work rant

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“Starting in March, JPMorgan will require employees to work in the office five days a week. Anyone who doesn’t like it can leave. You don’t have to work at JPMorgan. It’s a free country. You can walk with your feet” — Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief executive, in a secretly taped private meeting.

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Dimon’s rant, released hours later, sent shockwaves through the company and beyond, prompting discussions around two separate but equally contentious, even inflammatory, subjects. The first, companies ordering their employees back to the office; and second, the recording and dissemination of private workplace conversations. Dimon’s heated exchange with an employee seemed to perfectly capture the mood of the moment.

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Though he apologized after the recording went viral, Dimon did not change his position, even in the face of an employee petition and talk of unionizing. His response: “I don’t care how many people sign that f—–g petition.” After all, he retorted, he had not left the office since COVID and had in fact been there seven days a week.

Dimon made it clear that working from home provides little value to a company, and that it is detrimental to junior employees. He argued that young employees working exclusively online will not receive the mentoring or relationship skills they would develop in an office setting. As he put it, “They are left behind socially, (on) ideas, meeting people…”

He is correct.

I was talking to an experienced employment law mediator on a case this week, who said she had noticed that, thanks to Zoom-only mediations and hearings, employment and other trial lawyers were not developing the skills they once did. After all, without being able to see an employee’s expressions, comportment and mannerisms, much of the context for effective cross-examination is removed — let alone the risk of parties cheating with notes passed to them by others.

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Too many employment lawyers now count on mediators to do the real work and settle their cases without providing the added value their clients are paying for. And working through a camera homogenizes the quality of counsel, preventing the most effective use of the skills great lawyers provide.

In his back-to-office diatribe, Dimon added, “And don’t give me this s–t that work from home on Friday works. I tried to call a lot of people Friday, not a goddamn person to get a hold of. That’s not how you run a great company.”

In my own firm, we now permit people to work from home one day a week, as long as they do so effectively. They can pick their one day, except for Mondays and Fridays, to avoid the temptation to create three day weekends. It’s a middle ground Dimon clearly has no interest in.

Quite apart from the CEOs salty comments on “working” from home, what the leaked rant should remind us of is the ubiquity of recording devices. Most will remember the taping by graduate student Lindsay Shepherd of a discussion she had with her professors about Jordan Peterson, and the public debate that followed.

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Everyone has a phone that can record conversations. Unlike in the United States, it is not illegal to tape record your own conversations in Canada, and the courts admit such recordings as valid evidence.

Does that mean that employees have liberty to record their bosses or coworkers? Who wants to work in an environment in which you can be secretly recorded anytime? Such a potential would chill discussion and make that workplace an untenable environment.

For that reason, although it may not be criminal to tape record conversations, it is generally cause for discharge without severance. It would be otherwise if an employee was being abused, such as, for example, being subject to hurtful racist epithets that, once complained about, are denied by the miscreant, and the employer does not believe they occurred. In such an instance, a court would likely permit an employee to tape record to provide their evidence to the employer, or ultimately to a court.

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There has long been a saying that one should not post anything on social media that one would not want your parents to see or, for that matter, read about on the front page of the paper. That can be expanded to never saying anything with anyone ever to avoid the same risk.

Howard Levitt is senior partner of Levitt LLP, employment and labour lawyers with offices in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. He practices employment law in eight provinces and is the author of six books, including the Law of Dismissal in Canada.

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