Authorities in France's Champagne region are investigating conditions on its famed vineyards after seasonal workers were found to be lodged in squalid accommodation. Now preparing to testify against their former employer, labourers told RFI about their gruelling experiences picking some of the world's most expensive grapes.
Last month authorities in the north-eastern department of Marne, where much of the wine region is located, shut down accommodation housing some 50 workers hired to pick the 2023 harvest.
A spot check found the lodgings, in the commune of Nesle-le-Repons, to be unsanitary and unfit for purpose. Seasonal workers, mostly migrants from countries in West Africa, were sleeping on makeshift beds among trailing electrical cables and "disgusting" bathroom facilities, according to labour inspectors.
"It's something you can't explain. It still makes me cry, we went through so much there," one worker, Boubakar Soumaré, told RFI.
"The whole time I've been in Europe, I've never suffered like that before."
He and the other labourers, many of them without French work permits, were recruited by word of mouth, he told RFI's Marie Casadebaig. They were promised two weeks' work harvesting grapes, with food and accommodation included.
Instead, Soumaré said, they toiled nearly 12 hours a day with barely any food or water.
"There was corn growing nearby, we would go and steal it just to have something to eat," he recounted.
Human trafficking
The workers have since been rehoused by local authorities and prosecutors have opened an investigation into suspected human trafficking.
The men's employers, who ran a company contracted by champagne producers to provide temporary labour, face up to ten years in prison if they are charged and convicted.
The workers are also fighting to be paid the wages owed them, with the backing of the CGT trade union. They were only paid for three out of eight days they worked, they say, and the CGT is mounting a civil case to help them claim the rest.
According to the union, such exploitation is all too common on French farms.
"We regularly come across situations like this one, involving unscrupulous, mafia-style contractors," says Diane Grandchamp, who represents agricultural workers within the CGT.
"But if these contractors exist, it's because there are people hiring them – agricultural bosses who want these services at low cost. Very often the people in charge aren't convicted, because they say they aren't aware of what's going on – but it's not possible to shut your eyes to the conditions that the people working your land are in."
Some 120,000 people are hired each year to pick the champagne harvest, usually for two to three weeks at a time.
The CGT says the proliferation of contractors offering to recruit short-term labour on behalf of producers has encouraged the exploitation of seasonal workers, especially undocumented immigrants willing to work for low wages and without proper contracts.
At the end of this year's harvest, prosecutors in the Champagne region have opened at least one other trafficking investigation, involving 160 Ukrainian labourers found to be lodged in unacceptable conditions in the commune of Mourmelon-le-Petit.
Special protection
As for the workers in Nesle-le-Repons, they will be allowed to stay in France for the duration of the investigation.
"Because of the exploitation they were subjected to and the fact that they reported the people responsible, they are eligible for a certain type of protection," explains the lawyer representing them, Maxime Cessieux.
"The same applies to victims of prostitution and others. There are several categories of workers who benefit from such protection when they dare to report their employers, which is not always the case."
For those without immigration papers, that means a temporary residence permit to remain in France legally, which will be extended if a court finds that their employer trafficked them.
"We don't know what will follow," another worker, Djiakariao Konaté, told RFI. "But for now at least we feel a bit safer."
