Talk to grape growers and wineries about sustainability, and they’ll often tell you all about water conservation efforts, organic or biodynamic vineyard practices, and even bottle weight. But all too often, there’s one topic that remains so untouched, it feels taboo: workers’ rights. The fact is, many wineries are dependent, particularly at harvest time, on migrant workers, who often face difficult working conditions, struggle to find affordable housing in high cost-of-living wine regions, and lack the resources to build better lives for themselves.
More egregious labor violations have led to heatwave-induced deaths in Champagne, France, and instances of forced labor and blatant abuse, including housing overworked employees in abjectly poor conditions. Even in less severe instances, vineyard workers may struggle to find affordable housing close to their workplaces and suffer from a lack of stability due to inconsistent seasonal wages. In an industry so aligned with luxury, the workers that are perhaps most important to the operation are all too often neglected and exploited, if not outright abused. Many grape producers are aiming to shift to more sustainable vineyard practices, by reducing water and synthetic pesticide use, for instance. But isn’t it time that workers’ rights become a bigger part of the sustainability conversation in the wine industry, too?
Providing high-quality housing for essential vineyard workers
“We all speak so strongly about sustainability and regenerative farming, and one of the strongest caveats to it is the people, and it’s not just the people that own it … it’s the employees,” explains Karin Wärnelius-Miller, co-owner of Garden Creek in Sonoma, California. “It doesn’t matter where you are, whether you’re in the office or in the winery or out in the field, … you have to take care of your employees.”
In Sonoma, where real estate prices are sky-high, finding affordable housing can be exceedingly difficult. Some employees working in the vineyards have to travel long distances before the early morning shifts that are often required during harvest time. But at Garden Creek, Wärnelius-Miller and her husband, Justin, prioritize providing housing not just for their workers but for their workers’ families as well and have done so since 1964, extending their sustainability efforts beyond their vines. Not only is this advantageous for the workers, but it’s also proved beneficial for the Wärnelius-Millers — particularly when blazing fires have threatened their vineyards and on-site employees jumped in to protect the vines.
Wärnelius-Miller points out that this is not an issue that’s specific to the wine industry. “It’s the same thing if you’re an office employee in downtown San Francisco affording an apartment,” she says. “You’re not going to take the job if you can’t afford it. And you’re not going to take the job unless you’re going to be happy where you live.” If more wineries followed Garden Creek’s example, the wine industry could lead the charge in building more sustainable working environments and living arrangements for employees.
Creating mutually beneficial working relationships
Providing housing is one way vineyard and winery owners can ensure better working conditions for their employees; innovative organizational models are another. At Feudi di San Gregorio in Campania, Italy, owner Antonio Capaldo wanted to ensure his workers weren’t just employed for a season but rather on a full-time basis. At his winery, he says, “The concept of seasonal employees doesn’t comply.”
Out of the winery’s 120 workers, most hold traditional full-time positions. However, 30 to 40 of those workers aren’t actually working every day. Instead, they work on a framework called “bank of hours.” At some points in the year, particularly around harvest time, these employees are working overtime. During less busy times of the year, though, they may be doing less work, sometimes only working three days a week. Despite their varied schedule, they’re still paid a fixed monthly salary. At the end of the year, if they’ve worked overtime, they get paid for the extra hours in addition to their base salary; and even if they’ve worked fewer hours than expected, there is no docking of pay — they still get their salary in full.
Capaldo credits his employees’ flexibility with this ability to institute such an organizational structure, but the fact that the winery produces other products also plays a role in this arrangement. Feudi di San Gregorio makes olive oil, tomato sauces and other edible products, which gives employees something to work on when there may not be much to do in the vineyard. He says that employees get “cross-functional training” that allows them to work in the vineyards, in the warehouse, in the olive-oil making process and beyond. “People are a little bit happier because they do different things, because they have stability of salary,” he explains. This stability of salary means that workers don’t have to rely on government assistance during the off-season (which is reportedly common in Italy and ultimately benefits neither the worker, the winery nor the taxpayer), and they can more easily apply for a mortgage and build stable financial lives for themselves.
Whereas some wineries will tout their sustainability initiatives as evidence of their apparent goodwill, Capaldo admits that offering this sort of labor arrangement is, to him, simply a sensible business decision. “At the end of the day,” he says, “we started it, yes, of course for the people, for the community, but also because … it’s a bit of a selfish thing. You do it because it’s better for you as well.”
When you treat workers well, says Capaldo, they’re more likely to stick around. “The more you go marginal … in the way you treat [workers] — so you consider them as an add-on on marginal activities, sometimes forgetting that the harvest is the most important moment for us as producers — the more you treat them marginally, the more you don’t get people that consider the employment central in their lives, and the more you get the people you find rather than the people you want to find or want to have.” This is especially important when it comes to high-quality wine production, which demands experience and skill in the vineyard. He hopes to retain his talent so the knowledge and skills they’re acquiring can continue to help the winery grow. “The sustainability program for us was not something for charity or for the beauty of going to a conference and saying, ‘Oh, I’m sustainable’ but actually was a very positive thing for the winery.”
Like Karin Wärnelius-Miller, Capaldo draws comparisons between the wine industry and other sectors of the economy, highlighting that the sustainability of working conditions necessarily touches all industries. Restaurants, too, which have in some parts of the world failed to provide stable working and living conditions for their employees, are also having problems retaining their workforces, just like many vineyards and wineries. “There is an issue in finding and keeping a qualified workforce. But the thing is that to find them and keep them, you need to find a different model of organization,” says Capaldo. “You need to understand that the system has changed, and you need to adjust.”
Utilizing local workforces
Many wineries around the world rely on migrant labor, largely because in much of the world, they can pay migrants significantly less than native-born workers. This is true of much of the agricultural industry. Oftentimes, migrant workers are more vulnerable — to harm and exploitation — than their native-born counterparts.
So, for some vineyards and wineries, opting to hire locals doesn’t reflect a bigotry against migrant workers but rather a commitment to providing livable wages while fostering a connection with the community in which the wineries reside. According to Diego Cusumano, co-owner of Cusumano Winery in Sicily, Italy, hiring local workers just makes sense. “The majority of people working in our vineyards are local workers,” he says. “This is possible because in Sicily, there is a long tradition of viticulture, which for years has employed local people, and continues to do so today. With locals, it’s easier to maintain a lasting working relationship, and as a consequence, the same people return year after year.” Workers who have years of experience in the same vineyards hold valuable knowledge, which is why Cusumano sees an incentive to keep them coming back.
“Local workers are more deeply tied to the territories, they are closer and more easily reachable. They work not only for our company but to make the territory where they live more beautiful,” says Diego. In many cases, working with local labor might cost grape growers and wineries more. But it also displays a long-lasting commitment to the land and the community — and doesn’t involve the exploitation of foreign-born workers in the process.
Keeping production small
Many businesses consider growth as their main marker of success. But in the wine industry, quality is very often inversely correlated with production scale. To Capaldo, caring about one’s workers and the quality of the product go hand in hand. “I think there is a matter of where you position yourself in the value chain because if you have a high volume, low margin, low price production, then these kinds of things can seem a luxury to you,” he says. “Reaching out to migrants [and] cooperatives is probably less expensive [than ethically utilizing local labor].”
Wärnelius-Miller echoes a similar sentiment on the housing front. “I think it’s harder to maintain … the quality of housing in a way [when the scale of production gets too large],” she says. “As you grow bigger … it’s like anything else, you lose the human touch, in a way. … On our small family vineyard … We not only house the men, we house the families.”
Per Capaldo, “It depends on how much care you put into your products.” And by extension, that includes the people.
The state of workers’ rights in the wine industry is, in many regards, glum, due to low wages, difficult working conditions and lack of affordable housing in wine-producing areas. Just like in so many other industries — agricultural and beyond — profit all too often takes precedence over human rights and dignity. But the wine industry is not without solutions or models for a better, more ethical and more responsible path forward. It’s up to the owners and decision makers at vineyards and wineries around the world to recognize their workers’ value and provide them with not just adequate but dignified working conditions and lifestyles.
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