Labor & Employment Law

Hundreds Demand Chase Respect Human Rights

By James Parks

Hundreds of workers, religious leaders, community activists and farm worker advocates rallied and protested in 200 cities across the couintry today to demand that JP Morgan Chase respect the basic human rights of people to have decent places to live and work.

Large banks such as Chase are flush with cash and protestors demanded the bank declare a one-year moratorium on home foreclosures. The Wall Street Journal reports that Chase has $19.5 billion worth of home loans in foreclosure?nearly 7.5 percent of its mortgage portfolio and more than any other big bank.

Nearly 400 people rallied at Chase headquarters in New York City. Speakers stood on the back of a truck with banners declaring “Chase: Morally Bankrupt” and laid out the case that as a result of the  bank’s reckless pursuit of profits at any cost, thousands of people have lost their homes. 

Today’s protests mark the beginning of a new, intensified campaign leading up to JP Morgan Chase’s  annual meeting next month.

“It is immoral for Chase to continue to make record profits and hand out $17 million bonuses while putting so many hardworking families in the street,” said Minister Patricia Malcolm, secretary of Churches United to Save and Heal, a citywide coalition of clergy in New York City.

Chase has a particularly poor record at modifying people’s loans, and we will not stop until they change their lending practices.

Farm workers also pointed out that Chase is complicit in the squalid housing conditions for tobacco workers because it is the biggest lender for  the giant tobacco company R.J. Reynolds. They demanded that Chase use its leverage with Reynolds to end human rights abuses in the tobacco industry.

?I have been to the fields and camps of farm workers who harvest tobacco and seen the very rough working and living conditions they endure,? said Virginia Nesmith, executive director of the National Farm Worker Ministry.

Giant corporations who benefit from that labor like Reynolds American and …JP Morgan Chase could use their tremendous power in the marketplace to improve those conditions but have not done so. We are here not just to say shame on Chase, but to implore them to make amends to farm workers and foreclosure victims. Turn this around!

“Chase and the other financial giants made a killing from government bailouts, and now they have turned their backs on the suffering of the taxpayers who came to their rescue,? said Baldemar Velasquez, president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC).

Instead of helping the people who are struggling to keep their homes, Chase executives havehelped themselves to big salaries and have invested in companies like Reynolds Tobacco at the top of an industry that is notorious for health and life threatening working conditions and housing that is unfit for human habitation.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on March 18, 2011 (boomark / email).