Vineyard scene in the Marne Valley.
Authorities found hungry, exhausted workers living in a squalid hut when conducting a routine check in Nesle-le-Repons, a village in the Marne Valley.
Gendarmes and officers from France’s MSA agency regularly inspect these buildings in a bid to combat illegal work.
They 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’, according to a report from the prefectural decree.
Officials also noted non-compliant electrical applications, which posed a risk to the 52 undocumented workers, who were from Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Guinea and Gambia.
One of the Champagne pickers shared video footage of the accommodation with French media outlets, showing a mud floor, grimy beds and no ceiling.
They told reporters that they were recruited in Paris and promised €80 per day to pick Champagne grapes, but the funds were not forthcoming. The workers said they were only given a bag of rice and a few bunches of grapes to eat.
‘We were hot during the day and cold at night,’ said one worker, Mahamadou, who came from Mali to France to pick grapes, in an interview with l’Humanité. ‘We didn’t eat much, like dogs, we slept [penned in] like sheep, we washed with cold water. We were treated like slaves. The toilets were clogged, it smelled very bad. We really suffered.’
Sabine Duménil, general secretary of the local trade union in Marne, went to meet
