Morgan Stanley’s CEO admitted he ‘was wrong’ when ordered his staff to return to its New York City office in July after the Omicron variant forced workers back home.
‘I was wrong on this,’ James Gorman, 63, admitted. ‘I thought we would have been out of [the pandemic] past Labor Day and we’re not,’ added Gorman who ordered his staff to return to the office by Labor Day or a face a pay cut.
‘Everybody’s still finding their way,’ he said.
The CEO previously said that his workers would need to return to the office by Labor Day to keep their ‘New York City salary’ because if they were allowed to eat in restaurants throughout the Big Apple, they could ‘come into the office.’
‘If you can go into a restaurant in New York City, you can come into the office. We want you in the office,’ Gorman said in July.
‘If you want to get paid New York rates, you work in New York. None of this “I’m in Colorado and work in New York and am getting paid like I’m sitting in New York City.
‘Sorry, that doesn’t work.’
Chris O’Dea, a managing director at the company, also backed this up in November, stating: ‘If you’re [ages] 21 to 35, you are nuts not to be in the office all the time.’
Gorman cited the reason for wanting workers back in the office was because Morgan Stanley does all its training in-office and builds ‘successful careers’ there.
‘That’s where we teach, that’s where our interns learn, that’s where you build all the soft cues that go with building a successful career that aren’t just about Zoom presentations,’ he said in July.
Now, Gorman suspects there will be more variants and will ‘eventually run out of letters of the alphabet.’
‘Who knows, we’ll have pi, we’ll have theta and epsilon, and we’ll eventually run out of letters of the alphabet. It’s continuing to be an issue.’
Gorman said 65 per cent of vaccinated employees have returned to the New York office and 95 per cent of the company has at least one jab.
The Biden administration has also started preparing for an explosion of Omicron cases that they believe will result in a flood of sick Americans going into the already overburdened hospital system.
‘Everything points to a large wave. A large wave is coming,’ a senior administration official in President Joe Biden’s White House told Axios.
The official, however, expressed hope the cases wouldn’t be as severe as previous COVID variants including Delta as the White House continues to push booster shots as the best protection.
‘It will be fast. It won’t be as severe, but regrettably, there will be plenty of hospitalizations,’ the person said.
Omicron now makes up three per cent of all new US infections and has been detected in 33 U.S. states including Alaska and the District of Columbia, the CDC said on Tuesday. In New York and New Jersey, 13 percent of new cases have been caused by the new strain.
The U.S. is currently averaging around 120,000 cases per day, a 49 percent increase over the past two weeks. Hospitalizations are rising as well, with an average 66,000 Americans receiving treatment every day, a 22 percent increase over the past two weeks.
Meanwhile, the total number of known coronavirus cases in the United States surpassed 50 million on Monday and the death toll is rapidly approaching more than 800,000.
And only 27 percent of those vaccinated have also received their booster shot, according to the CDC, which medical experts say can help ward off the new variant.
California brought back its statewide mask mandate for all indoor places across the state on Monday, joining New York who did the same last week. New Yorkers who evade wearing a mask could face a $1,000 fine. In Philadelphia, residents must now show proof of vaccination to enter bars and restaurants, like in New York City.
Washington, Oregon, Illinois, New Mexico, Nevada and Hawaii have also implemented similar mask policies.
Source: Daily Mail
