A lovely postscript to a recent campaign.
On the 9th February, there was a Post on Learning from Dogs about the flower industry. Here’s a small extract.
At flower farms in Ecuador and Colombia — the countries that export the most to the U.S. — two-thirds of the workers are women. These women are routinely subjected to harassment and even rape from their male supervisors. They suffer eye infections and miscarriages from consistent contact with dangerous pesticides.
In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, they’re routinely forced to work 80-hour weeks with no overtime pay. Attempts to form a union are met with opposition by police and armed forces.
Apparently some 40% of annual purchases of flowers are purchased for Valentine’s Day in the USA. Anyway, in today’s in-box is this lovely update from Change.org
Dear Paul,
We are blown away by the incredible impact Change.org members have made around the world by starting, joining, and winning dozens of meaningful campaigns over the past few weeks. So we wanted to drop you a quick note to say thank you. And congratulations. And let’s keep fighting.
Here are a few of the top victories and successes we’ve had together:
- Late last week, the largest florist in the world, 1-800-Flowers, responded to 54,000 Change.org members and agreed to begin selling Fair Trade flowers and insist on a strong code of conduct for all their suppliers to counteract the deplorable working conditions that thousands of female flower workers face in South America. They’ve promised to offer Fair Trade flowers in time for Mother’s Day, making 1-800-Flowers a leader in the industry. (Click here to write a thank you message on 1-800-Flowers’ Facebook wall.)
Nice one! The website Change.org can be found here.