The champagne industry is a billion-dollar enterprise, yet much of its wealth is built on the backs of exploited workers. Last year, France’s famed winemaking producers took a hit when reports of migrant workers from Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Guinea, and Gambia were found living in deplorable conditions while harvesting grapes for some of the most coveted champagne houses. These workers are often undocumented, forced to endure days of grueling labor, and housed in unsanitary, makeshift shelters.
The Telegraph reports that a human trafficking case involving pickers is underway and will open next spring. The case is expected to massively damage the reputation of the romanticized industry, exposing the culture of wine producers’ blind eye to exploitative practices.
Modern slavery within the grape vines
Despite working long hours under the scorching sun, migrant laborers receive as little as €80 per day, paid under the table. They are denied proper meals and forced to sleep in overcrowded, unsafe conditions—conditions likened to “hell” by the workers themselves.
As written in the article,
They [authorities] 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.”
A video shot on one worker’s smartphone showed the only meal of the day: a weevilled bowl of rice eaten standing up, around camping tables. Inside, bare electric cables were exposed on the roof of the shower, posing the risk of electrocution.
Most winegrowers pay subcontractors to provide and look after the pickers.
“Every morning between 5 and 6am”, these subcontractors came to collect the pickers, loading them into three vans with no air-conditioning “like animals”.
A system built on exploitation
Subcontractors, hired by winemakers, are often responsible for providing labor, but they shirk responsibility for worker welfare. In many cases, laborers are transported to the fields in cramped, unventilated vans, “like animals.”
When confronted, vineyard owners pass the blame to subcontractors. Yet, as Jose Blanco of the CGT-Champagne trade union points out, champagne producers cannot simply “wash their hands of it.” He believes that both the middlemen and the producers must be held accountable for the suffering endured by workers.
This harvest season, Blanco said his colleagues found “people housed in tents that weren’t even hidden in plain sight, which is forbidden”.
“We saw African workers sleeping rough at Epernay station and being recruited in the morning by winegrowers. We saw service providers coming to recruit them and offering them much less than what they were supposed to be paid,” he said.
The lethal side of corporate greed
In September 2023, French prosecutors investigated the deaths of at least four grape-pickers who succumbed to extreme heat while working in the fields. Among them was a 19-year-old seasonal worker who died as temperatures soared to 32 degrees Celsius in the shade. Another two workers died of suspected heat stroke in the southern Rhône valley.
One government warning urged workers to start early to avoid the worst of the heat, but little has been done to address the underlying exploitation.
“To grow enough food, it is necessary to adapt the schedules…and continue to produce in conditions which are necessarily somewhat degraded,” said Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau, as record-breaking temperatures pushed workers to the brink.
This is not the first time France’s champagne industry has faced allegations of worker mistreatment. In 2018, a Sri Lankan couple was convicted of human trafficking 125 grape-pickers, most of them undocumented migrant. Yet, Veuve Clicquot, one of the companies implicated, was acquitted and distanced itself from the scandal.
“They know who provides the grapes. They have the means to go back up the chain if they want to,” said Blanco.
Corporate greed continues to fuel exploitation in the champagne industry, with producers prioritizing profits over the basic rights and dignity of their workers. Without systemic change, these abuses will persist, staining the legacy of France’s iconic bubbly. Demand that people are always put before profit by pushing for mandatory human rights due diligence laws everywhere.
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That agriculture minister should be made to resign. Putting low prices or high profits (often both) before human rights and safety at work should be a crime punishable with jail sentences – that’s the only way to stop human exploitation at the seemingly ever-increasing rate that the world is witnessing. Fines are not enough – they just make modern slavery a calculated risk for offenders. Until we take a firm stand against modern slavery, poor people will continue to suffer and die.