Recruiters found guilty in Champagne vineyards human trafficking case

MARSEILLE, France (CN) — Three people, a recruitment company and a vineyard cooperative in the Champagne region of France were found guilty of exploiting seasonal workers, housing them in conditions that harmed their “security, health and dignity,” and human trafficking in a case that has exposed the risks of abuse in the wine industry.

“When [the workers] arrived in Champagne, at night by bus, they were taken to a small country house that was completely unsanitary, without toilets and showers under a makeshift shed, without wastewater drainage,” Maxime Cessieux, the lead lawyer for the civil parties, told Courthouse News. “There were more than 50 of them in this place, and they slept 15 per room on the floor, without a bed or on old, filthy mattresses.”

Cessieux said since they didn’t know the region and were essentially in the middle of nowhere — in Nesle-le-Repons, a town of roughly 150 residents near Reims — there wasn’t a clear way out. Throughout the day, workers said they worked in crushing heat, watched over with knives, tear gas and pistols. They had minimal water, food that made them sick and no way to do laundry.

“So they slept in the clothes they had sweated in all day, on empty stomachs, without water, and with one toilet for 50 people,” Cessieux said. “So they really felt like they were being treated like animals; they were humiliated, but above all, they were shocked by the disregard for human dignity.”

The trial began June 19 at the criminal court in Châlons-en-Champagne, roughly 35 miles from where the workers were found. Three judges, including a president, made up the tribunal.

Svetlana G., on trial along with her two associates, ran a company that recruited vineyard workers. When Courthouse News contacted a wine business with the same name, a representative said they were not involved in the case. No other companies in that industry with that name have an online presence.

Defense lawyers couldn’t be reached for comment.

The prosecutor requested the judges dissolve the company and fine the vineyard cooperative roughly $230,000.

“We cannot accept any Champagne bottle concealing unregulated subcontracting and blatant mistreatment,” the prosecutor said when the trial opened.

The case dates back to 2023, when the workers — many but not all of whom were undocumented migrants — were recruited through a WhatsApp group promising “well-paid work.” One week after they arrived in Nesle-le-Repons, a neighbor tipped off labor inspectors.

In France, court documents are not public. Cessieux declined to share the labor inspection report. But he and other experts said agricultural workers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation.

“These issues in the agriculture industry globally are systemic, and they are very, very widespread,” Rachel Hartley, a consultancy director at the Slave-Free Alliance, told Courthouse News. “The agriculture industry is one of the highest-risk industries for exploitation — it’s up there with manufacturing and with construction and some others, and it’s because of the nature of the work that it involves.”

Cessieux said sectors involving manual labor, like fruit and vegetable picking, poultry and duck plucking, and forestry operations, are especially vulnerable.

Every year in Champagne, roughly 120,000 seasonal workers carry out the entire harvest by hand across roughly 85,000 acres owned by over 16,000 growers.

David Desgranges, a lawyer and president of the French Committee Against Modern Slavery, told Courthouse News that Champagne houses sometimes knowingly exploit workers.

“In reality, it is through subcontracting that these Champagne houses … ultimately profit from this exploitation,” he said. “Whether it’s this sector or other sectors, it is always profit that is the generating factor.”

Cessieux specializes in exploitation and human trafficking cases. But he was struck by the defense’s argument in this case.

“They mentioned that they had fallen into a trap,” the lawyer said. “We had the impression that they were reversing the roles, throwing responsibility on each other … and they denied the evidence, so in fact, they treated the victims as liars.”

After seeing the workers’ conditions firsthand, Cessieux was shocked the defendants implied they had no responsibility for what happened.

For Hartley, more should be done to ensure migrants can get decent, safe work; they must understand what good, safe jobs look like.

“We’ve got to really know where our workforce is coming from, and we have to do the right kinds of checks, and unfortunately, they seem to learn that lesson the hard way quite a lot of times,” she said. “So if we had safer recruitment and employment structures for migrant workers at a country level, and then we had businesses doing all the right due diligence, and then we had channels for workers to very safely and confidently raise any issues, I think that could massively help this situation."

Hartley also describes a knowledge gap: People don’t necessarily recognize exploitation on a micro level, through individual experience.

“I think what we often see is that workers aren’t part of that dialogue,” she said.

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