SAP 2.75/WP.129
Industrial Activities Branch
Working Paper
Employment and working conditions
in the Colombian flower industry
Little is known about the characteristics of persons employed in the flower-growing sector with the excpetion of their sex and level of qualification. Traditionally, work in flowers has been associated with an essentially female workforde. The first data on gender suggest that participation of women is of the order of 70 percent of total employment (14) but this has been falling. A survey conducted by the Vocational Training Institute, SENA, in 106 enterprises in Sabana de Bogotá in 1981 revealed a figure of 64 per cent and more recent surveys from the National University and Aflocsa suggest even lower figures: in Madrid 62 per cent (Diaz 1994) and among the production workers of the 53 enterprises affiliated to Aflocsa 59 per cent (1992). The more delicate tasks such as, seeding, tapping, tacking and grading are carried out by women, while soil preparation, fumigation, construction of infrastructure, cold storage, supervision and technical assistance are entrusted to men (Diaz, 1994). In addition to being considered more sensitive in the handling of the flowers, women are preferred for being more stable in their work habits and for having a lower turnover than men. However, they do show rather high levels of absenteeism explained by their double workload at work and home and the preference for them maybe changing.
Contrary to the structure by sex, the occupational distribution does not seem to have changed over time. Production workers represented 90 per cent of the total staff in the survey by SENA in 1981, as in that of Aflocsa in 1992; the remaining 10 per cent represents employees. More recent studies by Asocolflores in 1995 and 1996b together give similar figures: 88 per cent for production workers and 12 per cent for employees.
At the production level, flower-growing tends to generate low-skill employment. Initially, flower-growing was handled by illiterate workers and education was not an important variable. Enterprises did not have any requirements with respect to schooling in the recruitment of production workers. The requirements were limited to the skills used in the operations of each worker (Granados, 1982 and Hoyos, 1996). This was clearly reflected in the educational level of the workforce. According to the 1981 survey by SENA, 85 per cent of the workers had primary schooling as their maximum education level. Over time, preference was gradually given to persons who could at least read and write and who could maintain a registry of flowers and plants by zone, in order to facilitate basic statistical control of yield and productivity. As a result, the educational requirement of jobs in the sector increased, but tests are still relatively simple, in most cases requiring knowledge of basic cultivation skills with some knowledge in numeracy and literacy (Aflocsa, 1992). Illiterate persons are no longer recruited and there is a clear preference for production workers with completed primary education. In 1995, in a survey of nine enterprises and 841 workers of the regional Aflonordes, some 71 per cent of workers had completed primary schooling as the highest educational level and only 3 per cent were illiterate. This indicates that the skill requirements for work in the sector are rising although still relatively low. This has facilitated the labour market insertion of a labour force primarily of rural extraction. Recruitment was initially only local; but soon the municipalities with flower farms converted themselves into a pole of attraction for rural workers from neighbouring municipalities as well as from other departments. Rural workers are well liked by employers for their work capacity and their subservience (Hoyos, 1996).
Finally, with regard to the age structure of the labour force a very young labour force is evinced from the survey carried out by Aflonordes: only 26 per cent of the 841 workers were over 35.
