Colombian Workers Pay High Price for Flowers

by James Parks, May 5, 2009

Amanda Camacho and her 10-year-old son Joiner.

This Mother’s Day, remember the mothers in Colombia who grew, cut and trimmed the flowers you receive. Six days a week, Amanda Camacho and thousands of her co-workers at flower plantations in Colombia cut and trim at least 350 flowers an hour. In the weeks before holidays like Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day, the work extends deep into the night—all for about $8 a day, less than the cost of a bouquet of carnations in the United States.

Speaking today at a brown bag luncheon at the AFL-CIO in Washington, Camacho, a Colombian union leader and activist, said the mostly female flower workers in Colombia are treated like slaves and the flower companies’ claims that they are treating their workers well are simply “lies.’  

Camacho begins a national tour next week sponsored by the International Labor Rights Forum’s (ILRF) Fairness in Flowers campaign, Jobs with Justice (JwJ), the Coalition of Labor Union Women and U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP).

More than 60 percent of the flowers sold in the United States come from Colombia. Two-thirds of the nearly 100,000 flower workers in Colombia are women, many working mothers. They often are required to work 12 to 15 hours a day with few breaks. Although they generally work long hours, the flower workers often are denied overtime pay. 

In conjunction with the tour, USLEAP has designed two Mother’s Day cards, each featuring a photo of a Colombian flower worker and her child. On the back of the card, the recipient can read about women who work in the flower industry in Colombia and their efforts to form effective unions on their plantations. You can place your Mother’s Day card order here. Click here to learn about other ways you can help the flower workers.

Camacho is president of ASOPAPAGAYO, a union of workers from the Agricola Papagayo plantations. A single mother of two adolescent boys, she has been working at the same flower plantation for 14 years. She says she has stayed at the company as a strategy to organize and work toward better conditions for all flower workers.

Camacho has more than the fortitude it takes to organize a union—she knows she’s risking her life. Thousands of Colombian trade unionists have been killed for their work in the labor movement. Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world to be a union member, with some 2,697 unionists killed in the past 23 years, a rate of one every three days.

Camacho helped the workers at the Papagayo plantations form a union—a big victory for women who are treated like second-class citizens, she says.

We created the union ourselves. We gained our dignity.

While on the job, the women who cut and care for the flowers in greenhouses suffer numerous health problems, Camacho says, because the work can be backbreaking. The repetitive motions frequently cause carpal tunnel syndrome and back troubles, and workers often suffer headaches after inhaling pesticides all day in the extreme heat.

Yet when the women go to the doctor, they often find out that employers have not paid into the nation’s health care system as required by law, even though they take the premiums out of the women’s pay. And when the women return with a doctor’s note saying they can’t perform certain jobs, the supervisors ignore the notes.

Overall, the workers have learned that “organizing people really works,” Camacho says.

The fight now is to organize more workers. The only way to enforce your rights is to organize.

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