Date of publication: February 14, 2006
Source: Miami Herald
By Jane Bussey
A union leader in the Colombian flower industry came to Miami with a host of complaints about working conditions on a flower plantation run by Dole Fresh Flowers.
When a van overloaded with 19 farmworkers flipped over on a Florida highway, killing eight farmworkers returning from citrus groves in 2004, the accident garnered headlines across the state. But when a bus transporting 70 Colombian workers to a Dole Fresh Flowers' plantation crashed and killed three employees last July, few read abut the accident.
Colombian flower worker Stella Orjuela came to Miami on Monday to bring a message to corporate America and to consumers that working conditions on Colombian flower plantations should also concern Americans because the carnations and roses grown there are cultivated almost exclusively for the U.S. market.
Colombia is the second-largest flower producer in the world after Holland.
''We work from six in the morning until 10 at night, particularly now because of Valentine's Day,'' said Orjuela, who has worked for Dole Fresh Flower's C.I. Splendor Farm in Colombia for seven years.
Orjuela and Allison Paul of the U.S./Labor Education in the Americas Project are slated to meet today with John Amaya, president of Doral-based Dole Fresh Flowers. A division of the privately held Dole Food Co., Dole Fresh Flowers has a 328,000-square-foot distribution center at its Doral headquarters.
Colombian flower workers have a long list of complaints, from alleged health and safety violations, to low wages of about $174 a month, to high quota requirements to meet production targets.
''Then there is the mistreatment. They tell us that we are no good,'' said Orjuela, who is a leader of the independent union Sintrasplendor, which is seeking to hold collective bargaining with Dole.
The company, Orjuela said, has waged a campaign against the Sintrasplendor union members. Colombian social protection authorities ordered Dole to reinstate four fired union workers last fall, but the company has appealed the decision.
In an e-mail reply to questions, Amaya disputed the allegations, saying that health and safety conditions are extremely important to the company and it has ''instituted award-winning occupational health and safety programs'' on the flower farms near Bogotá.
The Dole executive said that the bus accident involved an outside contractor and that Dole intended to take ``all steps necessary to hold the company accountable for the accident.''
Amaya also said that the company cannot negotiate with the Sintrasplendor union, which he said represents only 28 percent of workers, because it has signed a collective bargaining agreement with Sintraflor.