UAW and AFL-CIO encourages Chase to pressure RJ Reynolds

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/Channels/Story.aspx?ID=1326062

12/12/2010

Lede: Trade union leaders, ministers and activists supporting farm workers and victims of bank home foreclosures are pressing their case with Chase Bank. Doug Cunningham has more.

By Doug Cunningham

On Friday United Auto Workers members joined the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, community activists and clergy to leaflet a hundred Chase Bank branches calling for a one-year moratorium on home foreclosures. Activists also want Chase to put pressure on RJ Reynolds to improve the working and living conditions of farm workers who harvest tobacco used in RJ Reynolds products. Brandon Rees is with the AFL-CIO’s Office of Investment.

: “Banks serve and important function in our society and have a tremendous amount of power – not just over the labor practices and employment practices of farm workers in the fields, but even over our homes and communities that are being ravaged by the foreclosure crisis. We call on JP Morgan Chase to do the right thing, to meet with community representatives and farm worker representatives to address both poverty in the tobacco fields as well as the rampant foreclosures that are sweeping the country.”