WASHINGTON -- Trade union leaders, ministers and activists supporting farm workers and victims of bank home foreclosures will protest at 100 Chase Bank branches from coast to coast on International Human Rights day, Friday, Dec. 10, at noon. Handing out fliers to bank customers, the protesters are calling on JP Morgan Chase to institute a one-year moratorium on home foreclosures and use its influence as the lead banker for Reynolds Tobacco to facilitate talks that could lead to improved conditions in America's tobacco fields and farm labor camps.

"With my own eyes, I witnessed the squalid conditions farm workers are forced to live and work in," said UAW President Bob King, one of the protest organizers.  "Chase Bank has an opportunity and a social responsibility to bring Reynolds Tobacco to the table to stop this human exploitation."

Although neither Chase not Reynolds directly employ farm workers, both are in a position to address conditions in the fields and labor camps. 

The protesters' fliers cite Wall Street Journal reports that Chase is No. 1 in home foreclosures.

"Chase is the home foreclosure Prince of Darkness," said the Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman of Detroit's St. Peter's Episcopal Church.  "They are throwing hundreds of thousands of American families out into the cold. This must stop."

Baldemar Velasquez, president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, is hoping the protests will move Chase Bank to demand socially responsible behavior up and down the tobacco industry supply chain. 

"Farm workers face job-related hazards including heat stroke, pesticide and acute nicotine poisoning," Velasquez said.  "If Chase wants to continue lending money to cigarette manufacturers, it should facilitate talks that could lead to improved conditions and saved lives."

King and Velasquez are vice presidents and executive council members of the AFL-CIO.  The Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman is a founding member of the anti-foreclosure campaign, People Before Banks.