ARTE | Re:
Exploited for Champagne
When Champagne bottles pop, there is most likely something to celebrate: a wedding, a new job or New Year's Eve. However, the during the Champagne harvest the mood is far from being that cheerful. Every year, tens of thousands of migrant workers come to France to work in the fields. And while the major Champagne brands are experiencing record sales, some of the migrants in the fields work like modern-day slaves.
Investigative journalists Robert Schmidt, Stéphanie Wenger and Ishaq Anis have been researching the dark side of the Champagne industry for months, supported by the European research NGO Journalismfund.
Trade unionist José Blanco has been criticising "the exploitation of foreign harvest workers" for years and warns against "unscrupulous temporary work agencies". Entrepreneurs have already been sentenced to prison several times for human trafficking and slave-like working conditions. Nevertheless, little has happened. The cheap contracts with labourers from Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa are apparently too lucrative for the companies to stop.
For some Polish harvest workers, taking painkillers seems to be the norm, a young Bulgarian reports being cheated out of his wages and an Afghan reveals his daily life as a labour slave. Lawyer Benjamin Chauveaux has represented several victims in the largest human trafficking trial in Champagne to date. He has gained an insight into a complex system of subcontractors, at the end of which the major Champagne brands also profited from slave labour. The lawyer criticises the fact that the role of the major producers has hardly been highlighted to date: "It seems as if people are only ever interested in those who hold the whip in their hands, but never in those who give the orders".
