“An exemplary decision” for “facts of exceptional severity”. On Monday, three people were sentenced by the Châlons-en-Champagne criminal court to prison and fines for having operated and housed in unworthy conditions around fifty seasonal workers, often undocumented, during the 2023 harvest of a champagne vineyard.
The main defendant, manager of the Viticultural Provision Company Anavim was sentenced to four years in prison, including two farms with a deferred deposit warrant. It was also continued for concealed work, employment of foreigners without authorization and with “non -existent or insufficient remuneration”. The two other defendants, two thirty-year-olds accused of having participated in the recruitment of the harvest in Ile-de-France, were sentenced to one year in prison and respectively two and a year of stay.
75,000 euros fine
The president of the court, who described the facts as “exceptional gravity”, demanded the dissolution of the company Anavim, and condemned a wine cooperative of the Marne, the SARL Cerseuillat de La Gravelle, to a fine of 75,000 euros. The defendants will also have to pay 4,000 euros to each victim.
“This is an exemplary decision, which takes into account the number of victims, the conditions in which they were employed and exploited,” reacted Maxime Cessieux, lawyer for the victims, welcoming a “fairly historic decision in the framework of milking files in the world of work”. The CGT deplored an insufficient sanction for its part. “75,000 euros is nothing at all for farms like that. What we are asking for is the downgrading of crops “so that they are no longer used to produce Champagne, said José Blanco, secretary general of the CGT intersyndicat of Champagne.
“Like slaves”
The facts judged dates back to September 2023, while the labor inspectorate proceeds to control of accommodation made available to the harvesters by the company Anavim in Nesle-le-Répons, in the southwest of Reims. She then notes living conditions bringing “seriously affected” to their safety, their health and their dignity. “Fortune bedding”, “a repugnant state of toilets, sanitary facilities and common places”, dangerous electrical installations … The prefecture decides to close the place.
“They put us in an abandoned building, no food, no water, nothing at all. And then we are taken […] To harvest 5 in the morning until 6 a.m., “said Modibo Sidibe during the trial. When the court asked Camara Sikou, how they had been treated, “like slaves,” he replied.
In a hearing in June, the manager of Anavim, from Kyrgyzstan, had denied being at the origin of the accommodation conditions of the harvesters, referring responsibility to the two other defendants.
Four dead in 2023
This trial has a particular resonance while these 2023 harvest had been nicknamed “the harvest of shame”. Indeed, in the month of September, particularly warm in the Champagne vineyard, four people working in the harvest of the grapes were dead.
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“We had to stick alongside the victims. We do not play with the health and safety of seasonal workers. We do not play either with the image of our name, ”reacted the Champagne committee on Monday, which had brought a civil party, representing 16,200 winegrowers, 130 cooperatives and 370 champagne houses.
Next November 26, a service provider and its manager will be tried in Châlons-en-Champagne, suspected of having accommodated in unworthy conditions at least forty Ukrainians during these same harvest.
