Mother's day flowers come with more than just a price!

   This article focuses on a Columbian woman named Lorena who has worked minimum wage for years working in the cut-flower industry. She started a family at the age of 19 and since then she has needed more money to raise a family. Cutting flowers were the only source of labor in the region of Columbia where she was located known as Bogota Savannah. She didn't have very many alternatives to her job choices but to arrange carnations, alstroemerias, and cut flowers to export to US consumers. Her two daughters have gotten the chance to get an education and one of them is actually involved in missionary work. Years of work making minimum wage of $333 per month has left Lorena with debilitating injuries, she remarks that she wants to support her family and doesn't want the same for her children. The National Retail Federation estimates that this Mother’s Day weekend, Americans will purchase more than $2 billion worth of flowers. Almost 80 percent of those flowers come from Colombia. These flowers are often prone to attracting pests and disease and to combat this, companies pump highly toxic pesticides and fungicides into the greenhouses where these flowers are kept. When exposes to these chemicals in unsafe working conditions, workers often suffer from rashes, headaches, impaired vision, skin discoloration, and female workers report substantially higher instances of birth defects and miscarriages. Lorena says that over the years she has worked countless hours of huddling over flower beds, trimming stem after stem. Years of cutting, bunching, and arranging bouquets in massive factories she's developed tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, a spinal column disability, and a torn rotator cuff. The company provides minimal healthcare, Lorena has to fight to see a doctor she remarks, "Every time I go they say there are people with more serious problems and they push her to the back of the line. The company offers precautions by providing the workers with masks and gloves to protect themselves from the harmful chemicals sprayed on the flowers. She even recounts a story when a co-worker collapsed in the middle of his shift with his face turning purple was said to have died from a heart attack, but there's a rumor that he had succumbed to the chemical sprays. This is something to think about the next time you consider giving flowers to your significant other when these workers in South America who live off of peanuts trying to support their family working marathon shifts with very little rest in between.
   
    This also parallels the strenuous work that illegal immigrants engage in here in America just to find a job opportunity with a decent amount of money to support themselves and in many cases their families. The US is known for giving their lowest paying jobs that nobody wants to do to immigrants and those who earn low income. This country also heavily relies on jobs provided to people who work for American companies over seas just to make a living. This country runs on the strenuous labor and extensive work hours that these workers must endure just to give service to those who are more fortunate than they are.

Michael Zelenko, May 8th 2014, Vice.com