Flower Sellers of Manhattan
Smith, Robert
For many sellers the choice is between working for poor wages or accepting the danger and uncertainty of selling on the street. "T wice they Brought me S to jail!" exclaims a Mexican flower...
...Vending provides the workers with respect and dignity...
...Working conditions vary with the weather: when it's cold, the sellers freeze, and so do their flowers...
...The flower seller was recounting her experience of being arrested and jailed for 48 hours in 1992 for selling flowers on the street...
...to purchase their flowers from the wholesalers downtown, they also are at the mercy of the market on a particular day or week...
...At least two flower vendors have been killed on the job, one after being physically attacked and suffering a heart attack, the other while caught in the crossfire of a shootout between drug dealers...
...Imagine that...
...Vendors remember stories of relatives whose sweatshop bosses closed their operations down without paying their employees and, when workers filed claims through the New York State Department of Labor, reopened under a new name on a different floor of the same building...
...This was at least the third attempt to organize the vendors and negotiate with the police in the last five years...
...king them right inside the jail...
...Another vendor describes her preference for flower vending over factory work in these terms: "For me, I do not like to work in a factory...because they pay very little money...The only place you can earn a little more is in flowers...
...For many vendors, the choice continues to be one between poor wages and conditions in a sweatshop, or dangerous conditions and uncertain pay with greater autonomy, freedom, respect and dignity as vendors...
...According to the police, vendors are often detained because they don't have identification, and therefore must be processed through the criminal justice system to ensure that no other warrants for their arrest are pending...
...He would get so angry and come and fight them...
...The indignation of the flower seller quoted above is heightened when she notices how the drug dealers on Robert Smith teaches sociology at Barnard College...
...But no matter how hard she works, she is not going to earn much money...In a factory, you don't get more than $150 a week...I tell you it's not worth it to be under the shadow of Immigration coming and getting me...
...Then every minute, every noise I hear I will think is in a sweatshop VOL XXX, NO 3 Nov/DEC 1996 41REPORT ON LATINO LABOR Immigration coming to get me...A cousin of mine who worked in a factory had to hide in a bag of Many of tl garbage because Immigration came...
...For example, vendors now relate instances of police officers telling them how to avoid tickets, or buying flowers to bring home to their wives...
...This is not the only difficulty...
...They [prostitutes] had little tubes [crack pipes] A vendor uses a supermarket cart to inside the jail...
...But they C It n have a child, they need the money, and flower vending e vendors are offers flexibility and a chance to earn...
...He was left unconscious on the street and ended up in the hospital suffering from dizzy spells for long periods afterwards...
...If sales are slow, they make little and eat less...
...And there are other dangers...
...The situation for women vendors is worsened by the harassment they often get from men on the street, especially the tigres-the drug dealers who sell on the same streets as they do...
...He is very jealous...
...In the uncertain world of the streets, vendors are sometimes seen as easy targets...
...Yet ask the flower vendors why they sell flowers instead of working in factories or other jobs, and they will inevitably answer the "respect and dignity" they feel that vending affords them...
...It bore fruit in the short term, due to the combined efforts of the vendors, local MexicanAmerican community leaders, clergy, politicians and others...
...In one case, several youths in a car pretended to buy flowers from a vendor, only to beat him up and rob him once he pulled out his money to make change...
...They are tough, they are united, and he is only one...
...In the aftermath :es, and they of the death of Don Sixto Permits to sell Santiago Martinez, a flower seller attacked on Father's New York...
...For many of these workers, flower vending is still by far the best option...
...they wanted better police protection from the regular attacks and thefts they suffer on the street...
...umented: they The vendors have not been ;as to be in the silent in the face of all this maltreatment...
...Moreover, the flexible hours of flower vending make it easier to raise children...
...I know a lady they pay $3.50 an hour [in a factory...
...citizen to get one...
...City vending laws require a visa to get a permit, although the citywide maximum of 2,000 permits makes it extremely difficult even for a U.S...
...Day, 1991, the vendors orga- nized themselves into the Upper Manhattan Flower Vendors Association...
...Prosti- tutes...
...The Association aimed its principle demands at the police: they wanted the police to ease up on their confiscations and to negotiate ways the vendors could avoid having their flowers confiscated...
...Thieves...
...What kind of police are these...
...9'C her street are treated...
...They put me in there with all that pestilence...
...Some members of the Police Department, especially then-Assistant Police Commissioner Yolanda Jimenez, have been helpful in attempting to work out a compromise...
...flowers i Vendors are their own bosses, and they can set their own hours...
...And they have guns...
...She works from 7 in the morning to 6 at night...
...When it became clear that the police were still confiscating flowers and that more permits were not forthcoming, the Association fell apart...
...In most low-skilled factory jobs, one is forced to work for extremely low wages doing very hard work under close scrutiny with uncertainty as to whether one will be paid...
...Imagine that...
...In the heat, both the flowers and vendors wilt...
...Things have since returned to "sell your flowers and take your chances...
...While she has been thrown into jail more than once, drug dealers sell openly on her block and never seem to get arrested...
...Like most of the roughly 500 Mexican flower vendors who began making New York's streets a bit more colorful in the mid-1980s, she and her husband do not have a phone and he did not know if she was dead or alive for the two days she was in jail...
...They would kill my husband...
...don't have v For the average undocumented worker in New York, the $200 per United StP week that flower selling brings in don't have is more than the expected earnings at a nonunion factory job...
...And everything...
...The problem, however, is bigger than the good intentions of the Assistant Commissioner or others in the department...
...Being thrown into jail is not the only risk of selling flowdisplay her flowers on New York's ers in New York City...
...exclaims a Mexican flower vendor in New York City...
...What one has doubly undc to do to work in a factory...
...And they [the tigres] would kill my husband...
...I would never tell him what happens...
...Many of the vendors are doubly undocumented: they don't have visas to be in the United States, and they don't have permits to sell flowers in New York...
...All this is measured against the constant fear that their flowers and carts can be confiscated, often subjecting them to the loss of more than a week's pay in merchandise, and that they can be thrown in jail or assaulted on the job...
...Since then, they and other vendor groups have marched on City Hall to demand just treatment and better police protection...
...One woman lives in constant fear that her husband will find out that these men harass her while she sells and will be killed fighting the tigres...
...Yet this freedom has its price...
...Smo- Upper West Side...
...Not only do many vendors have to rise by 5:00 a.m...
...These two prohibitions reinforce each other...
Vol. 30 • November 1996 • No. 3
