Valentine's Day Sweatshops

Published on Saturday, February 12, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Valentine's Day Sweatshops
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Before you buy your sweetie those roses for Valentine's Day, pause for a
moment to consider where they come from, and at what cost -- and what can be
done to give a bit more joy not just to the flowers' recipients, but their
producers.

Cut flowers are a highly globalized industry. The majority of cut flowers
sold in the United States are imported, especially from Colombia and
Ecuador. Kenya and Tanzania are the key overseas supplier for Europe.
Here's how the industry looks from the multinational corporate perspective:
"In just a 24-hour period, each stem is cut, packed and loaded onto a
temperature controlled UPS aircraft heading to Miami. There, they clear
customs and are distributed to florists and consumers across the country.
Eighty-seven percent of all cut flower imports arrive in Miami." UPS reports
that it imported more than 14.8 million stems of cut flowers into the United
States last year from South American countries such as Colombia and Ecuador.
But on the ground in Colombia and Ecuador, things don't look so smoothly
efficient and trouble free.

Olga Tutillo is secretary general of Rosas del Ecuador, a flower workers
union in Ecuador. She has worked at flower plantations for 22 years. She is
38 years old and has five children.

Tutillo explains how hard the work is for Ecuador's roughly 100,000 flower
workers, about 70 percent of whom are women -- the faces behind Cupid. The
International Labor Organization estimates about 20 percent of the workforce
consists of children.

The workers generally earn the national minimum wage, $145 per month. They
work especially long hours in advance of Valentine's Day and other
flower-giving holidays in the United States. They experience major
occupational risks. Back pain is common among those who must stand or lean
all day. Repetitive motion injuries are common. Rose pickers are frequently
cut by thorns.

"There are also problems caused by pesticide fumigation," she explains.
"Fumigation happens every day, either to prevent the plants from getting
different diseases or to deal with it when they do get those diseases. Some
of these chemicals are highly toxic."

Flower workers who try to organize to improve their working conditions face
severe repression.

"It is extremely difficult to unionize in Ecuador," says Tutillo. "The
companies are organized among themselves and they have a list on the
Internet of the people who have tried to unionize or have unionized. If
someone tries to create a union, the company threatens to fire them and says
they won't be able to find another job. These are the famous blacklists."
Thanks to firings, blacklisting and other tactics -- like increasing use of
contract workers instead of full-fledged employees -- the unionization rate
in Ecuador is depressingly low. Among 300 flower companies in Ecuador,
reports Tutillo, "only four have unions -- the other attempts to unionize
have been repressed."

The story is much the same in Colombia, says Ricardo Zamudio, president of
Cactus, a Colombian organization that conducts research on issues related to
the flower industry.

Workers are trying to organize despite the repression they face. In
Colombian a recent important development has been independent unionization
at one flower company owned by Dole, which altogether controls 20 percent of
Colombia's flower exports. The International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) is
running a letter-writing campaign to urge Dole Fresh Flowers and the
Colombian-based firm Splendor Flowers to respect workers' right to unionize
www.laborrights.org.

Unfortunately, as long as the repression remains intense, consumers have
much more freedom to demand flower justice than do the flower workers.
In Europe, a flower certification program has taken hold that tells
consumers whether flowers were grown on farms or plantations that respect
minimal environmental and labor conditions. According to the International
Labor Organization, a substantial portion of flowers grown in Kenya,
Tanzania and Zimbabwe receive certification under the Flower Label Program.
The flower certification program is no panacea, but it does help modestly
improve environmental and working conditions, and it gives workers more
space to organize.

The program has had much less impact in South America, in considerable part
because the Flower Label Program hasn't taken hold in the United States,
where most Colombian and Ecuadorian flowers are shipped.

Just like with sweatshops, consumer pressure can make a significant
difference in the lives of the flower workers. But the opportunity is in
some ways greater, because of the concentration among both flower producers
and sellers. ILRF is leading the way, trying to galvanize consumer pressure
to force Dole and large cut flower sellers -- Albertson's, Safeway, Costco
and Wal-Mart, among others -- to pressure flower suppliers to respect
workers' rights to organize, protect employees' health and safety, and pay
overtime wages.

So go ahead and give that rose for Valentine's Day. But be careful of the
thorns -- and to avoid sticking it to the flower workers, support the ILRF
campaign.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com. Robert Weissman is editor
of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational
Monitor,http://www.multinationalmonitor.org . Mokhiber and Weissman are
co-authors of On the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of
Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press).
###