Colombian Flower Worker Visits US, Denounces Dole

Getting permission to use the restroom at the La Fragancia flower plantation in Colombia “is like winning the lottery,” according to Dora Acero, the Secretary of Education for the union at the farm. Workers must ask permission to take the single flag shared by 180 to 200 workers, which hangs on the wall in the greenhouse and is their ticket to leave the work area.

Ms. Acero came to the US this April to talk about conditions on her plantation, her union’s struggle to achieve a collective bargaining agreement, and her opposition to the Free Trade Agreement between the US and Colombia. The tour began in Washington, DC where, thanks to assistance from the AFL-CIO, Ms. Acero spoke with a number of Congressional aides about the labor law violations her and her coworkers daily experience. In an April 2 Capitol Hill briefing sponsored by Rep. Phil Hare, Ms. Acero spoke with Jeff Vogt from the AFL-CIO and Bama Athreya of the International Labor Rights Forum on worker opposition to the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

Ms. Acero also visited Chicago, Madison, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Akron, Toledo, and Detroit on the April tour, speaking to unions, churches, universities, high schools, and community organizations.

Dismal Conditions in the Industry

Ms. Acero told tour participants “there are companies that have decided that during the high season their workers should sleep at the plantation because if you start your day at 6:30 in the morning and work until 2:30 in the morning, there is no time to go home to sleep before starting again at 6:30.” The high seasons in the Colombian flower industry correspond to the periods leading up to Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day in the US, and a period in September connected to a Colombian holiday. Workers decided to form a union at the La Fragancia plantation due to poor working conditions and lack of respect from management.

Flower workers have daily contact with dangerous pesticides used in the greenhouses that have led to a variety of health problems for workers. “We are asking them to give us protective clothing to work with the pesticides because we want to avoid what happened to my mother, who now has blood poisoning,” Ms. Acero reported. High levels of chemical contamination have been linked to long-term health affects for workers in the flower industry, particularly in women.

Access to education was another issue Ms. Acero raised during the tour. Due to very low salaries, many workers cannot afford to send more than one child to school at the same time. Parents send a child to school one year, then keep the child home the following year so that another can go. She reported that this affects girls disproportionately, who are often expected to stay home and care for smaller children and do housework when their parents are working long hours at the farm.

Blacklisting Union Workers

Ms. Acero told audiences that just over two years ago, “the company started a ‘company union’ and obligated all of the workers at the plantation to belong to this union.” The union that she refers to is Sinaltraflor, the infamous flower-industry “union” that has worked closely with companies and the flower business association in Colombia to undermine legitimate worker organizing. The union has recently been exposed as nothing more than a tool of the industry (see story, p.

“Aside from starting ‘company unions’ the companies try to intimidate us so that we won’t form independent unions. They make blacklists, or say that if you join an independent union you won’t be able to be hired at any other plantations, or that they are going to close the plantation if there is an independent union, just like they did at Splendor,” she said. The larger of the two Splendor Flowers plantations, also owned by the Dole Food Company, closed its doors last year, destroying the largest independent union in the Colombian flower sector. Since its closure, workers report that local managers have used this as threat to deter workers from joining independent unions.

Campaign Against Dole Continues

The tour was focused on Dole Foods, who owns 20% of the Colombian flower industry.

According to Ms. Acero, “Our campaign is against the Dole group because we work for them and we have realized that this is not just our problem, but a problem for Dole workers around the world.” Workers have launched campaigns against Dole in the pineapple industry in the Philippines and in the Latin American banana industry, where Dole is similarly associated with poor conditions and union-busting.

Ms. Acero urged tour audiences to support the campaign by writing letters to Dole, demanding that the company respect workers’ freedom of association and sign fair contracts with the unions on their plantations. Hundreds of letters to the company were gathered during the tour, and USLEAP will continue to urge Dole to resolve their labor rights problems. For more information about contacting Dole, please visit www.usleap.org/actions.

“We are asking that they respect us as human beings and as workers. We need this work, but we want a dignified form of work.”

Special Thanks to Our Tour Partners!

AFL-CIO
Butler University Department of Political Science
Central Indiana Central Labor Council
Chicago Trade with Justice Working Group
Community Action on Latin America
DePaul University Study Abroad Program
Indiana State AFL-CIO
Inter-Religious Task Force on Central America, Cleveland
IUPUI Labor Studies Program
Labor Notes
Latinos Unidos, Butler University
SEIU Local 1, Chicago
Toledo Area Committee on Central America
Mexican Students de Aztlan, University of Illinois Chicago
University of Chicago