Modern slavery in Champagne
More than 50 people of African origin were transported from Paris to the Marne Valley to help with this year's champagne harvest - in sometimes inhumane conditions.
They were housed in deplorable and makeshift conditions in a building with a mud floor, no ceiling and little hot water. The shelter where they were trapped was only revealed when an alert neighbour called in the authorities. On September 15, French authorities closed the shelter, noting that it was "undignified and unsanitary" and that the bathroom was in "a repulsive state."
A package of rice and some grapes
The grape pickers, many of whom are of West African origin, reported that they were given a packet of rice to eat, some grapes and "inedible" sandwiches, and that they were promised 80 euros a day for picking the prized champagne grapes - an amount they say they were never paid.
"We were treated like dogs because we didn't get much to eat and we slept in a building, crammed in like sheep," Mahamadou, a grape picker from Mali, told the French newspaper L'Humanité on Sept. 21. Many of the pickers housed at Nesle-Le-Repons reportedly worked without identification or legal papers.
Champagne houses and their subcontractors
"Anavim," allegedly a Paris-based recruitment agency, was responsible for "recruiting" the teams, according to the pickers. In a report on French TV channel TF1 last week, the owner, Svetlana Goumina, who is a Russian national, according to the official French company database, denied the trafficking allegation.
However, on Friday, September 22, the French prosecutor's office in Châlons-en-Champagne announced the launch of two investigations into cases of trafficking in grape pickers. Prosecutor Céline Fassey said the investigation was unrelated to the deaths of four grape pickers in Champagne during a heat wave this month or to a fifth death in which a picker was found dead in a tent.
Fassey told French reporters that prosecutors are investigating "several companies" involved in human trafficking, which could result in significant fines and jail time for those responsible. She did not name the recruiting agencies or their contractors.
One case among many
In a second case of human trafficking during the grape harvest, 18 Bulgarian pickers were housed in inhumane conditions in a house in Cuis, a village in the Côte des Blancs region of Champagne, near Épernay.
On September 13 of this year, the French authorities closed a makeshift shelter in the Champagne village of Vinay, where 73 harvest workers from Eastern Europe were housed under undignified conditions, in tents set up in the greenhouses of the nurseries of the agricultural company "L'Orge Fleur". Just days earlier, on September 8, the local French prefecture had ordered the relocation of 160 Ukrainian harvesters after describing the conditions in the building where they were housed in the village of Mourmelon-Le-Petit as "unsafe" and "unhealthy."
Are those responsible looking the other way?
The investigation by the French prosecutor's office has raised new questions about the modus operandi and legal responsibility of Champagne houses and winemakers, as well as subcontractors, who hire some 120,000 harvest workers each year for the Champagne harvest.
"Lack of control over the entire chain of subcontracting enables modern slavery and human trafficking," said Sabine Duménil, general secretary of the CGT General Confederation of Trade Unions in Marne. In a joint statement issued Monday, the presidents of the Champagne Committee (CIVC), Maxime Toubart and David Chatillon, promised to redouble their efforts to prevent such dramatic situations from happening again.
"We have learned that some grape pickers have been housed in inhumane conditions. We strongly condemn this unspeakable behavior. We must act immediately to ensure that such situations do not occur again."
The CGT accused Champagne houses and growers of violating French law, which states that they have certain responsibilities and obligations with respect to monitoring the housing conditions of harvesters, even when Champagne houses subcontract the hiring and the subcontractors subcontract the work to smaller placement agencies. The CGT complains that the subcontractors used by Champagne houses and producers are inadequately controlled to find harvest workers.
A recurring pattern
As recently as September 2021, 130 French police officers took part in an anti-trafficking operation in Champagne to break up a Franco-Bulgarian ring that had recruited between 350 and 500 harvesters annually since 2017, according to the French prosecutor's office in Lille.
Meanwhile, on September 6 this year, the Châlons-en-Champagne court ordered "Moët Hennessy" to pay around 17,000 euros after rejecting the company's appeal against allegations of non-compliance with working time laws in connection with 17 harvest workers during the 2019 grape harvest. As it becomes increasingly difficult to find grape pickers for harvesting, several French wine regions are increasingly relying on mechanical harvesting, although this is prohibited in Champagne