France: Champagne workers allegedly subject to extreme exploitation, poor accommodation & exposure to fatal heat outside
"‘It’s hell’: the champagne workers forced to pick grapes in scorching heat,"
France’s champagne workers are being forced to pick grapes under scorching heat and living in makeshift quarters described as living “hell”.
A string of investigations have alleged that some of the grapes that end up in even some of the top champagne bottles are picked by victims of “modern-day slavery”....
A new investigation has also uncovered squalid housing where workers, undocumented migrants from Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Guinea and Gambia, were kept in sordid conditions before working in the vineyards.
Authorities found the hungry, exhausted workers last year when conducting a routine check in Nesle-la-Reposte, a village in the Marne Valley.
They discovered “makeshift bedding, dilapidation, unsanitary conditions, lack of cleaning and disinfection, the disgusting state of toilets, sanitary facilities and common areas [and] the accumulation of faecal matter in the sanitary facilities”...
They were paid €80 a day, undeclared, to fill 200 baskets of grapes. This meant working days of over 14 hours, without a break, most of the time under a blazing sun...
Most winegrowers pay subcontractors to provide and look after the pickers...
When identified and questioned by journalists, the vineyard owner deflected responsibility onto the subcontractor. As for the direct employers of the grape-pickers, the Kazakh couple, they refused to talk.
However, according to Jose Blanco, general secretary of the CGT-Champagne trade union, they were still operating for last year’s harvest.
“They’re presumed innocent so they’re still working,” he told The Telegraph. He called for a heavy sentence in the upcoming trial against the middlemen but said the champagne producer that employed them – Olivier Orbon [sic] – should also be sentenced. “They can’t just wash their hands of it and say they didn’t know.”
...
[Subscription required. The Resource Centre was not able to contact Olivier Orban to invite the wine grower to respond; if a response is received this page will be updated accordingly.]