Labor & Employment Law

UAW To Withdraw Funds From Chase In Support Of Tobacco Workers

By James Parks

UAW President Bob King, left, and FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez

The UAW has joined forces with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) and Detroit-area faith and community groups to take on JPMorgan Chase Bank.

Last Friday, UAW President Bob King and several faith leaders announced their intention to withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars from the bank over its refusal to declare a moratorium on foreclosures in Michigan and its continuing ties with RJ Reynolds Corp.

For three years, Susan Ivey, the CEO of Reynolds American, the parent of the nation?s second-largest tobacco company, has refused to meet with workers to discuss the conditions of thousands of tobacco farm employees in North Carolina and other states who harvest the tobacco Reynolds uses to make its products. JPMorgan Chase is one of the lead banks in a consortium of lenders that provides $498 million in credit to Reynolds American.

King, who returned last week from a fact-finding tour of the North Carolina tobacco fields, said:

Chase needs to help unemployed homeowners in Michigan and underpaid farm workers in the Carolinas. The bank could make a huge difference by suspending foreclosures and pressuring RJ Reynolds to do the right thing.

“It’s unbelievable the exploitation of those workers,’ King said, “it’s unbelievable the lack of dignity and respect [that they are given] as human beings.”

So we’re calling on all people of conscience, all people with spiritual and moral beliefs, to join with us in demanding that those workers are treated more fairly, and demanding that RJ Reynolds sit down and bargain with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee to improve the conditions of those workers.

Some 1,000 demonstrators marched on Chase Bank in June seeking a hearing with the bank’s officers on both of these issues.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on September 28, 2010 (boomark / email).