SAP 2.75/WP.129
Industrial Activities Branch
Working Paper
Employment and working conditions
in the Colombian flower industry
Footnotes
1. Madrid has a population of close to 40,000 inhabitants with a clear dependance on floriculture as 72 per cent of all adults are working in the sector. One can find a large gamut of flower-growing enterprises from the more ancient ones and to very recent ones, as well as enterprises of different sizes and administrative characteristics (Diaz, 1994).
2. Fairbanks and Lindsay (1997) write a similar history but with different names. According to these authors it was a Colombian who lived abroad for 20 years and upon his return to Colombia noted the advantages which prevailed in Sabana de Bogotá with regard to the commercial production of flowers. It was his enterprise which after struggling for various years to introduce and adapt the cultivation techniques used in the United States which in 1965 achieved the first fresh flower exports to North America.
3. The Vallejo Plan permitted the import of primary commodities and capital goods for the production for export free of tax. The tax credit was a credit for the payment of taxes.
4. Department on which administratively depends the municipalities of Sabana de Bogotá, with the exception of the capital of the republic.
5. See, for example, Junguito (1981), Mendéz (1991) and Asocolflores (1996).
7. The data refer to exports in volume, see table 1.
8. Monitor (1993), Patinô and Fulladosa (1996).
9. Asocolflores (1997), (1996) and (s.f.), Patiño and Fulladosa (1996).
10. According to the Vocational Training Institute, SENA, 5hectare farms employed 20 per cent more labour farms with 10 to 20 hectares. See SENA (1992), p. 137.
11. Asocolflores (s.f.), p. 8.
12. locsa (1992).
13. Data for employment at a national level have been taken Reyes (1977).
14. See, for example, Granados and Guevara (1982).
15. In this respect, see Reis, Sierra and Rangel(1995b).
16. These benefit plans provise for each dependent a monthly subsidy and an annual school subsidy.
17. Or for occasional jobs, transitory periods or to replace staff on leave, or otherwose, absent as established in the Colombian law.
18. See, for examples, Reis, Sierra and Rangel (1955a) and (1955b).
19. In Colombia the maximum legal weekly working times is 48 hours. Nevertheless, in enterprises the more tha 60 workers, with a working week of 48 hours, workers have a right to two hours per week for recreational, cultural, sports or training activities.
20. See Henao (1995).
21. See table 8.
22. Diaz (1994) reports that in that year some 16 per cent of flower-growing enterprises in Madrid stated employing children. Likewise, the study by Aflonordes in 1995 finds that 25 of the 841 workers - 3 per cent were below 18 years of age.
23. The first programme inculdes activities for the protection of the worker, clinical examinations, epidemiological surveillance of professional illnesses and pathologies related to the worker and statistical control of the causes of absenteeism and so forth. The second should lead to the identification of the risk factors and the means to control them, as well as investigations on the cause of occupational accidents and occupational illnesses with a view to eliminate these. In addition, Asocolflores contributes to these programmes with the publication of technical bulletins on occupational health, promoting applied research on the risk factores with the highest incidence in flower cultivation, and the carrying out of programmes and activities to control them, with training on occupational safety through periodic seminars, as well as training programmes in the handing of pesticides and specific vaccination campaigns against diseases, such as hepatitis B, tetanus, diphteria, and alike.
24. The medical hygiene and industrial safety committe has to be established in all enterprises with more than ten workers. Its goal is to represent the workers in all aspects related to the protection of the workers in relation to occupational health and industrial safety.
25. Some 24 per cent of these enterprises were in the process of establishing or, registering such a committe in the Ministry of Labour; some 11 per cent had no committee.
26. In the list of professional illnesses established by the national Government, there is no specific reference whatever to the flowere-growing sector.
27. Which is found in the programme Green Flower (Florverde) which establishes very specific standards with respect to environnemental impact control.
28. In recent years not only has Asocolflores worked for the establishment of a social and environmental programme called Green Flower (Florverde) which establishes objectives in relation to the control of environmental impact on occupational health, but also Colombia has implemented a system of occupational risks management.
29. The following analysis is exclusively based on information regarding the municipality of Madrid.
30. The Colombian Institute for Family Welfare (ICBF) is the government unit in charge of protection of mothers and children.
31. The average wage in the sector which up to the end of the 1970s was above the legal minimum wage today is equal to it.
