26/04/2007
Exposure to a cocktail of chemicals, no access to drinking water, violence and sexual harassment at the workplace, compulsory overtime, etc.: being employed in  horticultural firms in Colombia or Kenya is more a hell than a floral paradise. These are the findings of a report on the working conditions for employees – mostly women – in certain undertakings that supply flowers to British supermarkets. In Growing Pains. The human cost of cut flowers in British supermarkets, the British NGO War on Want particularly denounces the massive exposure of workers to over 100 chemical substances, of which one fifth are banned in the United States because they are highly toxic or carcinogenic.

• The report