Buy organic flowers for Valentine's day and every day. TAKE ACTION to support and show solidarity to Ecuadorian flower workers who seek labor rights and a healthy work environment.

Date:   2/8/2006 11:06:13 PM ( 18 y ago)

PAN ALERT: What Do Your Valentine's Flowers Mean?


Show the true meaning of love this Valentine's Day - buy organic flowers as an action that supports a healthy, pesticide-free environment for all of our loved ones, and show the workers who grow millions of cut flowers sold in U.S. that you support their right to a healthy work environment.

Take Action! http://ga4.org/campaign/valentines2006?rk=WpapIWn1zmEOE

Ecuadorian flower workers enable millions of cut flowers to be available to U.S. customers. At the Rosas del Ecuador flower plantation, workers were denied wages, and the owners failed to comply with agreements for transportation and food. The workers, who are unionized, exhausted legal and mediation processes to resolve the conflict. In desperation, they occupied the plantation which the owner had abandoned. For two years and four months, fifty-two workers have been holed up there, protecting the equipment, and growing their own food to survive. They are fighting to have the courts embargo the farm in order to extract the funds necessary to pay them all of their unpaid wages. Flower companies retaliate strongly against unionization attempts among their workforces. Olga Tutillo, the leader of the union, and the other strikers have been blacklisted because of their activism and defense of labor rights, and will never be hired again by other flower companies.

Support and solidarity for these workers is crucial at this time. Without stable jobs, these poor families will not be able to sustain their struggle for much longer. Please write to the Ecuadorian authorities to urge them to bring this case to a rapid close, by finding a way to pay these workers the wages they have been owed for more than two years, and making it clear to all other flower companies that freedom of association is a basic labor right and that plantation abandonment is not an acceptable way to fight a union or address a company's financial problems.

TAKE ACTION! http://ga4.org/campaign/valentines2006?rk=WpapIWn1zmEOE

Action Sponsored by PANNA Pesticide Action Network North America: http://www.panna.org/

Read more about Ecuadorian flower workers: http://panna.org/resources/panups/panup_20060207.dv.html

For more information on the Fairness in Flowers Campaign, visit http://www.laborrights.org/

If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for Pesticide Action Network North America: http://ga4.org/pesticideactionnet/join.html?r=o1apIWn1zmUfE

RESOURCES:

More about organic flowers/where to buy organic flowers on-line: http://curezone.com/blogs/m.asp?f=309&i=296

Some independent farms and farmers markets offer fresh organic flowers year-round. Local Harvest lists over 1,500 sources of organic flowers in the United States, and allows you to search for the ones nearest you:
http://www.localharvest.org/search.jsp?&ty=-1&st=0&nm=%20organic%20flowers



 

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