First Tennessee Bank raises its minimum wage to $15 an hour

The First Tennessee Bank building, Liberty Tower, and Republic Center are seen from a new apartment building at 728 Market Street.
The First Tennessee Bank building, Liberty Tower, and Republic Center are seen from a new apartment building at 728 Market Street.

Tennessee's biggest bank is boosting its minimum pay for its employees to $15 an hour, or $31,200 a year for full-time work.

First Horizon National Corp., the parent company of First Tennessee Bank, granted $1,000 one-time cash bonuses to 70 percent of its employees at the end of 2017 and announced the higher minimum pay rate Thursday. The bank said the bonus and pay raise "reflects the company's continued investment of tax savings in its people" after the new tax law cut the top corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent this year.

The Memphis-based First Tennessee Bank has more than 4,000 employees, including more than 200 employees in the Chattanooga area market.

Jeff Jackson, market president of First Tennessee Bank in Chattanooga, said the raise will affect about a third of the bank's local staff, "which in turn impacts their families, as well.

"It's another reason I'm proud to work for First Tennessee." Jackson said. "With this increase, we hope to retain many of our talented people."

Wells Fargo Bank previously announced a similar plan to boost the minimum pay for all of its workers to $15 an hour.

Unum Corp., Chattanooga's biggest publicly traded company, announced in January it was raising its minimum pay to $15 an hour, along with enhancing its parental leave benefits. Unum has nearly 10,000 employees.

The higher minimum pay rates at the banks and Unum are more than double the government minimum wage requirement of $7.25 an hour.

In the past year, a number of major employers, including Wal-Mart, Target and CVS, have boosted their minimum pay to at least $11 an hour, reflecting both the benefits of the new tax law and the tightening job market.

The U.S. unemployment rate last month as at a 17-low of 4.1 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

On Sunday, President Trump tweeted that "4.2 million hard working Americans have already received a large bonus and/or pay increase because of our recently passed Tax Cut & Jobs Bill.and it will only get better!"

First Tennessee announced the higher minimum pay just two months after it completed its merger with Capital Bank in North Carolina to create the fourth largest regional bank in the Southeast with approximately $41 billion in assets.

"First Horizon's continued strong results are driven by the individual and collective efforts of all our employees," Bryan Jordan, First Horizon's chairman and CEO, said in a statement. "As a result of the recent tax reform, First Tennessee invested a portion of the tax savings back into our people and our communities to strengthen our business."

Last year, First Tennessee also said it was contributing $16.5 million to its nonprofit charity, the First Tennessee Foundation.

Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 757-6340.

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