Breaking the taboo: raising labour standards in the wine industry

• ‘This is a topic that’s not aired enough.’

• ‘I’ve been going wine sustainability seminars for years and this is the first one that’s been about people.’  

These comments, just a couple heard in the room, cemented the feeling that the title of this roundtable discussion, Breaking the Taboo, was apt. Any industry that requires a large number of people in seasonal, temporary and/or low-skilled jobs can take steps to improve its labour standards. Wine is no different in this regard, but while great strides have been made in myriad environmental aspects of sustainability, and in talking about this side of the industry’s obligations, we feel the conversation about people is nowhere near as advanced. 
 
And so, at Menier Penthouse in south-east London, we assembled a panel of experts spanning producers, retailers, distributors, labour providers, regional bodies, trainers, issue specialists, certification schemes and more. The breadth of the panel was necessary: so many of the speakers noted that these are systemic, complex issues requiring a collective effort to address them. We hope it serves as the first of a series of working sessions looking at how we as an industry can do just that. And given the important role the media can play in this discussion, we invited the press to attend and ask questions.  
 
As moderator Dr Peter Stanbury said in his opening remarks, his hope was that we could all engage in ‘a sober reflection on how we address these things’. 

Dom de Ville from The Society explained why we felt the need to organise this discussion. ‘Labour standards seem to be seen as an additional hurdle in that we don’t yet talk about as much as other sectors.’ He cited the benchmarking work done by the Sustainable Wine Roundtable has borne this out: ‘The requirements for environmental certifications in wine tend to be very strong; social, less so.

‘In parts of Europe, we have growers and producers who need lots of people at harvest, work typically in the past done by local people, who don’t want to do it anymore or who have moved to the cities. They have to look further afield, bringing in people who could be more desperate for jobs and there, exploitation can happen. That’s just one of the realities we’re talking about…talking about it gives people the licence, the encouragement and the empowerment to change things.’

Jantine Werdmuller von Elgg is co-CEO of Stronger Together, a non-profit organisation set up 12 years ago, ‘with a vision of a world where all workers are treated responsibly free from exploitation’. They began in agriculture but have expanded to other industries, and have now trained more than 20,000 people from more than 7,000 businesses. She began by citing the UK’s Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, Jess Phillips MP, who stated in March that ‘modern slavery is so prevalent that if businesses are not identifying risks, they are probably not looking hard enough’.

Jantine stressed the importance of being ‘proactive not reactive. Often, we hear businesses haven’t put a lot in place – the topic is new, they are waiting for legislation, etc. What I’ve seen works well is when businesses just make a start!’ She added that while it was ‘great to see so many higher-ups in the room, [my] question is: Who are the eyes and ears on the ground in your organisation? …It’s important we have people in charge of sustainability but let’s not silo them.’

Key, too, is ‘building trust: it takes time to do this and to be able have open conversations… Exploiters will be finding new ways to exploit the systems you put in place over and over. We need to keep talking. Work with local partners, make sure you’re connected to everyone on the ground and embed good practice. What we do requires continuous improvement and needs to have people at its heart.’

Human rights expert Laura Falk has been working with The Society in this area and noted how far the business has come since she started: ‘They are now rolling out training to 150 own-label producers in five languages.’ For her, internal buy-in is key, alongside transparency. ‘These kinds of events show willingness, and that’s absolutely vital.’

Anna Turrell is a global leader in sustainability and currently advises Sustainable Wine Roundtable, who are creating a ‘coalition of action’, setting clear principles for the industry to get behind – ‘the rules of the game’, as she called it. ‘We have to make this simple and be really clear about the journey we’re on…sharing best practice and case studies so we can learn together. We do that with humility and with a mindset of continuous improvement.’

Allan Sichel is president of the CIVB (Le Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux), the Bordeaux wine bureau, representing nearly 10,000 growers and 4,000 négociants in the region. He stated their approach, ‘rather than being top-down, is starting from the base,’ This is important as so many growers are small-scale operations. He said there were two main issues the region needs to address. The first is accommodation, as there had been a few instances recently where people had been found to be sleeping in tents in the rain. The second was the risk of third-party labour providers risking human trafficking. ‘This is much more difficult to tackle, and it has to be done working with the state.’

Anne Jones from WineGB brought a UK perspective: ‘We always talk about the wine industry as being highly fragmented. This is especially so in the UK as it’s so fast growing.’ She posed the question that if an event were held like this purely for wine growers, who would they send? ‘They know who’s going to fill in the environmental boxes, but not the people ones. We need to enable people to understand how to take responsibility for something that feels so enormous, so risky (and) so terrifying. We have to provide that framework to make them feel they are part of a collective collaboration.’

James Dodson is CEO of Vine Works, a company that provides labour to wine markets. He said that the UK is ‘in a very good place’ compared with many other countries, ‘but we have seen changes post-Brexit: the skilled workforce, mostly Romanian, is depleting and being replaced with more unskilled – I’m not being political, it’s just what I’m noticing. This lack of availability of skilled labour means we are looking increasingly to mechanisation, such as machine harvesting.’ Another issue he raised was a legal one regarding language: although his organisation translates all its relevant materials into the language of the employees, this is not a legal requirement: ‘Remarkably, we are not obligated by law to have a contract they can read.’

Daniel Hart joined us from Hatch Mansfield, a distributor he describes as ‘fairly atypical’ in terms of its corporate governance, as it is owned by two wine-producing families.’ He raised the risk factors that come from the financial side of the wine trade: ‘The average price of a bottle of wine in the UK is low and is getting pressured by tax and duty rises and National Insurance and tax increases... for a modest 13.5% alcohol wine at £6 or £7 a bottle, the tax take is now over 60%, and the producer has to make margin and ensure all is run well.’ In the ‘biggest-risk countries’ for exploitation, the selling prices are even lower: ‘in South Africa,’ he said, ‘the tax take on a £5 bottle is now close to 80%’

‘Low prices and high taxes, coupled with poor corporate governance where businesses put shareholder interests above stakeholders’ stops business doing the right things they need to do,’ was his assessment.

Gonzalo Entre Canales, CEO of Entrecanales Domecq, a major Spanish wine group, agreed. ‘On a comparative basis, wine produced in developed economies in a scrutinised industry will have much fewer problems than some other industries, for example more commoditised food products.’ The solution, he said, ‘has to be a minimum standard on what a fair price for a bottle of wine is, and the education that if you’re buying something very cheap, it’s more likely a producer will be at risk of having labour issues.’ Indeed, the group has stopped producing cheaper wines within its portfolio, ‘as we could not ensure good margin and good practice, (so) we moved out of the market’. Growers with whom they work are made to sign a code of conduct, which combined with ‘making them aware of the issues and giving them training has worked well’.

He also raised what Dom had discussed earlier about many regions seeing a lack of local interest in seasonal and harvesting work. For him, ‘pruning is skilled labour’ and they have ‘incentives to hire skilled people and contract them throughout the year.’ This was a discussion point seized on later by Allan Sichel, who lamented the fact that decades ago in Bordeaux, children would be told to ‘work hard at school or you will end up working in the vineyard. We need to move away from this degrading language.’ Gonzalo is producing a range of wines where photographs and biographies of vineyard workers will be presented on the label in one initiative to raise the profile of this area.

James Macdonald from Hunter’s Wines brought a New Zealand perspective. ‘I wouldn’t say our issues are fully resolved, but we’ve done a lot of work in the area of labour supply…We quickly realised we needed to put in tight controls within the industry. We set up a scheme called Recognised Seasonal Employer in conjunction with the government and some other industries. It’s been a wonderful scheme for us and has professionalised our contract labour supply. Visas are granted for nine months, and the rate of return is above 90%: people want to come back and work. Visas are granted on a need basis, and the employer needs to show the government they have the land and facilities for the workers. The government can put in controls over hours they must work, pastoral care and minimum pay (a living wage, above minimum wage).

‘So the things that have worked have been licencing contract labour supplies, having a strong industry body and educating growers – a lot of growers don’t think beyond the farm gate. Things that didn’t work: hoping people would self-regulate and everyone would get on board. It only takes one bad story to ruin things for everyone and cause issues, so we had to take that out of the picture. Using subcontractors doesn’t give growers plausible deniability: we need to inspect accommodation and talk to workers.’

Lukas Müller from certification body Fair and Green noted that the term ‘on the ground’ had been used a lot in the discussion, but his organisation ‘need to talk to people. Not only people working in wineries, but owners, especially small businesses, as we expect a lot of them: produce a quality product and comply with an increasing amount of guidelines to ensure a safe environment. We are there to support them.’

In the end, he added we are dealing with ‘people, not labour resources, even though this doesn’t seem clear to everyone’.

The panel: