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Religious Leaders Call for Justice at Dole Flower Plantations |
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Workers at Dole flower plantations in Colombia got a boost for their efforts to improve working conditions in recent days when 11 national religious leaders sent a message to Dole Fresh Flowers: “Deal justly with your Colombian flower workers.”
The workers at two Dole flower plantations formed the Sintrasplendor and Untrafragancia unions in 2004 and 2005.
But the company has refused to negotiate a contract and has launched an anti-union campaign that includes closing its largest flower plantation after a two-year effort by workers there to form a union.
In a letter to Dole CEO David DeLorenzo, the religious leaders say:
People of faith in the U.S. are increasingly convinced that our companies should be expected to uphold moral standards with workers in operations abroad. We hope that you will uphold your image as a socially responsible company by negotiating in good faith and signing fair contracts with the independent unions at your flower plantations as soon as possible.
Flower workers often are required to work 12–15 hour days with few breaks. As a result, many have been injured on the job. (See video.) Dole is the largest producer and exporter of fresh cut flowers from Latin America to the United States, supplying 60 percent of the U.S. flower market. There are some 90,000 flower workers in Colombia, and two-thirds are women.
Says Charity Ryerson, program coordinator for U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP):
Flower workers routinely undergo repetitive stress injuries, health problems related to overexposure to pesticides and humiliating and degrading treatment by management.
USLEAP, which has been urging Dole to address workers’ rights on its banana and flower plantations, spearheaded the letter, timing the message for Valentine’s Day. Click here to learn more about USLEAP’s flower campaign.
Some of the religious leaders who signed the letter are: the Rev. Roy Medley, general secretary of American Baptist Churches USA; the Rev. Linda Jaramillo, executive minister of the United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries; the Rev. John Owens, director of the Social Action Commission of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; and Fr. John McNulty, justice and peace director for the Conference of Major Superiors of Men.
As Sayyid Syeed, national director of the Islamic society of North America, who signed the letter, says:
We cannot relish or recommend the products that are the result of deprivation of the workers of their rights, forced overtime, overexposure to pesticides and other exploitive practices.
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What is happening to the flower workers is symptomatic of what is happening to many workers in Colombia and exposes how the unchecked corruption hurts workers. And as long as it continues Colombia will never be a fair trading partner for the USA.
The Whitehouse likes to throw out how much Americans will sell to Colombia, but that will be only half the truth and not show the hurt that a country with low wages will cause to American workers and an economy already suffering. Take Viet Nam as an example. After the FTA with them, exports to that Southeast country increased by 84% to $1.82 billion. However imports from them totaled $10.54 billion, causing a 17% increase in the trade deficit. That large deficit increase added to the already over 3 million lost American jobs.
Under the current conditions, a passage of the FTA with Colombia would not only support the massive corruption and exploitation of Colombian workers, but cost American workers yet more jobs.