French champagne manufacturers are confronted with human trafficking test

The conditions for grape writers in the French champagne business are hiding in the heart of a human trafficking test that has opened in the eastern city of Reims.

Three people – a woman from Kyrgyzstan, a man from Georgia and the Frenchman – have been accused of more than 50 seasonal workers, mainly West Africa.

All-school workers, unmanageable migrants, were discovered during the September 2023 harvest, living in narrow and unhygienic conditions in a building in Nesle-LE-Repon, southwest of Reims in the heart of the Cartper country.

They were hired by a message from the WhatsApp group about the ethnic community of West Africa Soninke, living in Paris, which promised a “well -paid work” in the champagne region.

Between the ages of 16 and 65 at the time, the 48 men and nine women come from Mali, Mauritania, Cott D’Ivoire and Senegal. Many are present at the process on Thursday.

“They called us in Russian and stuffed us in this broken house, with mattresses on the floor,” said 44-year-old Kanouitié Djakariayou, in front of the La Croix newspaper.

“There was no clean water and the only food was a bowl of rice and rotten sandwiches.

“I never thought that the people who made champagne would put us in a place that even animals would not accept.”

“What we were experiencing there was really awful. We were traumatized by the experience. And we had no psychological support, because when you had no documents, you had no rights,” Dumbia Mamadu, 45 years ago, told the local L’union newspaper.

A week later from a local resident, the labor inspectors visited the scene and documented conditions that “were a serious violation of the safety, health and dignity of the occupants”, according to State Prosecutor, Annik Brown.

The prosecutor’s office says that life and eating areas were out, unprotected by the elements; The toilets were dirty; The showers were insufficient only with periodic hot water; And electricity was a danger to safety.

In addition, migrants worked ten hours a day with just 30 minutes for lunch, transporting to the vineyards, squatting at the back of the trucks. They did not have a written contract and the payment they received, “has no connection with the work done,” according to the prosecutor’s office.

“The accused had a complete neglect of human dignity,” said Maxim Cesio, who represents some of the migrants.

The 44-year-old suspect woman named Svetlana G. leads a recruitment agency called Anavim, who specializes in finding work for the wine industry. The other two were her associates.

In addition to the prosecution of human trafficking, the woman is also charged with undeclared labor, hiring foreigners without permits, inadequate pay and accommodation of vulnerable people under unfit conditions. All three face up to seven years of prison and big fines if they are sentenced.

The case raised questions about the degree of operation of workers in the Champagne Champagne industry of € 6 billion (€ 5.1 billion). With each grape that must be selected by hand, manufacturers rely on about 120,000 seasonal workers every fall, many of whom are recruited through agencies.

In 2023, six grape dials died of a suspected heat stroke during the harvest in the Champagne and Boyla regions – and in recent years there are two other criminal cases in which agents have been found guilty of abusing a migrant harvestingS

Trade unions said some champagne houses were hiding behind the intermediaries and wanted the law to change so that manufacturers could lose the label “champagne” if they were found to have used illegal labor – even indirectly.

“It should not be possible to harvest the grapes of the champagne using human misery,” says Jose Blanco of CGT Union.

But the main body representing the manufacturers of champagne – champagne Comité – said the abuse of workers happened very rarely and when discovered was immediately stopped.

The committee is presented in the process as a civil plaintiff, recognizing “the damage caused to the brand” by these “unacceptable practices”.