In Dubious Battle

The importance of taking responsible action

When Orwell wrote “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”, he directly targeted Stalin’s Russia, where in the name of “communism” (in theory a classless society) too many privileges were given to a small elite. In today’s world, this sentence is more pertinent than ever. The recent change of power in the US has clearly casted Donald Trump as Napoleon, however the same can be said about Emmanuel Macron in France, who took it upon himself to discard the results of the French legislative elections and enforce two consecutive minority governments. However, it is not Napoleon’s thirst of power that I would like to dissect today, but the way he exploited the other farm animals for his sole benefit.

The issue of worker exploitation has been a dark cloud which continues to linger on the champagne appellation, despite all efforts made by the Comité Champagne (CIVC) these last 16 months. For instance, on December 23^rd, the Guardian published its exclusive investigation into an “underpaid, underfed workforce, some of whom are forced to sleep on the streets, exploited by a system of labour providers” in an article entitled “Champagne’s sordid secret: the homeless and hungry migrants picking grapes for France’s luxury winemakers”. The story is not pretty, and once again denotes champagne makers as ruthless workforce abusers. In other words, it implies that most workers employed to pick champagne grapes are exploited, and that this is implicitly accepted by all in the champagne trade.

While I have no doubt that all “sordid secrets” unearthed in this story did happen, I do believe this story’s limited and inductive approach presents the reader with a few important pixels but misses the broader picture. In other words, the story lacks context both in time and space, and this diminishes its purpose and even its core message.

Let me explain, by mixing facts of the 2023 harvest (which was widely denounced) and even some of the 2018 harvest with some mishappening of the 2024 harvest and pretending this is business as usual for all champagne harvests, the story has been constructed rather than unraveled. By deliberately removing the timeline and giving an incorrect overview of what happened this harvest, the story, in my opinion, shifted from “investigation’ to ‘tabloid reporting’, which serves no-one.

The issue of human trafficking, workplace abuse and rough sleeping is too serious and deserves to be reported accurately. An investigation requires research – not just speaking to Jose Blanco of the CGT and the people he brings along. It requires immersing oneself in the harvest - which clearly did not happen seeing the journalists implied the harvest was in August and September- but in 2024 the harvest only started (very slowly) on September 12 – and thus visiting multiple domains and speaking to growers and harvesters about their experience. If the journalists had spoken to multiple random people about harvest abuse, they would have very quickly heard about the CIVC’s “all together for the 2024 harvest” plan which aimed to avoid all debauchery. Even a few critical questions to Mr Blanco would have elicited this answer, but seeing the article does not mention this, the journalists either did not know about this plan, or deliberately opted to omit it.

If the aim of the piece was to really draw attention to harvest abuse in champagne, a little historical overview would have been more poignant. There were several human trafficking cases in 2017 and 2018 before the cases of 2023. However, in 2024, luckily, no new human trafficking case was opened in the region. Even before 2017, undocumented migrants were regularly employed as vineyard workers and generally paid less than the minimum wage. For instance, in 2014, my neighbor met her future Senegalese boyfriend while he was picking her grapes illegally. The negotiant to whom she sold her grapes had organized the pickers with the help of a subcontractor. This is a story among hundreds showing shady picking practices in the region existed long before they made it into the news cycle. This example also points to the fact that these practices were (at least then) tacitly accepted, and officials of all ilk were more than willing to look the other way and pretend no harm had been done.

Things changed in 2018 when more than 120 illegal African workers were discovered living and working in inhumane conditions, especially after it transpired, they had been picking grapes for Veuve Clicquot. The story sent shock waves through the Champenois community. But by the time the Sri Lankan contractors who had hired the workers were trialed in 2018, Clicquot’s name had vanished from the charges thanks to a loophole in the French law which puts sole responsibility on the contractor, rather than the order giver. Moreover, the story, with or without Cliquot, remained almost completely under the international radar until several human trafficking cases were exposed in 2023. The initial reaction of the CIVC and Syndicat Général des Vignerons (SGV) to the scandals was to stonewall the crisis. Instead of issuing a press release to control the damage, they outsourced the crisis management to a prestigious Parisian agency with very limited wine press (and in my opinion) damage control knowledge, resulting in a serious tarnishing of the appellation’s image. Hence maybe even inspiring the Guardian article and/or the journalists disdain for fact checking their 2024 story.

Alternatively, the Guardian could have taken the angle of questionable employment conditions which have become more the norm than the exception in Champagne these days. An example of this is the use of short-term vineyard contracts which are interspersed by several months. In the off months, which generally include the harvest and trellising periods, the employer subcontracts the task to an agency in Eastern Europe, which will send its workers to Champagne, but pay them according to local labor laws, thus bypassing French minimal wage requirements. This allows the house or grower to make significant savings compared to employing a full-time employee. Doing this is 100% legal, but it has eroded the local work force (those working the short term contracts have drastically reduced rights compared to a full-time worker) and has more than likely added to the Champenois’ difficulties to attract reliable employees.

Subcontracting also discharges the grower or house from any accommodation responsibilities and may have added to the rough sleeping stories mentioned in the Guardian article. Even in direct employment, a house or grower is not obliged to provide accommodation. For example, in 2012 I picked grapes for a reputable small Champagne house in a neighboring village. Most pickers had come from other areas of France and were sleeping in tents on a piece of land surrounding the house harvest head quarters. They were employed as day workers and had asked to pitch their tent (for free) there, rather than paying for a campsite. In 2011, I picked grapes in the Provence, and pitched my tent on the domain’s terrain following the example of many of my peers, yet my then boss withheld food and board from my pay. illustrating dubious practices are relatively common in all French wine regions.

However, winemakers are not the only ones engaged in “profit preserving” employment practices. For instance, more than 70% of the teachers at the local Business School I teach at are temporary workers. This implies we have no “rights” to a certain number of hours per trimester, we get paid regularly outside the legally binding payment terms (at time of writing I am still waiting on my November and December pay), have no paid sick leave or even pension rights yet we are required to volunteer for unpaid work to show our commitment to the school. It is bonkers, but I and my colleagues put up with it because it is the system, and personally, I cannot be bothered fighting it.

Lastly, another example drawn again from personal experience shows that “profit Increasing” employment practices are not just a French thing. Before I arrived in Champagne I worked two years in the Netherlands for a large travel corporation, where I had been convinced by the HR department, to opt for expat status. This meant I paid fewer social charges and less tax, but more importantly, I cost the company about 1/3 less than a Dutch employee.

All of this to illustrate that companies, wherever they may be, are always on the lookout to skimp on employees’ wage costs and therefore use whatever legal loophole they have access to. Moreover, many large companies outside the champagne region have been linked to modern slavery since the beginning of the 21^st century. To illustrate, there was the Apple Uighur scandal linking the company to slave labor in China in 2020 or the Rana Plaza disaster exposing the dire working conditions of Bangladeshi garment workers in 2013.

However, forced labor scandals in other sectors or even other wine regions (eg Bordeaux) do not justify what happened in Champagne roughly up to the 2023 harvest.