The wine trade loves talking about sustainability. Sustainability panels; sustainability reports; whole sustainability fairs. Everyone has a new water recycling system or a solar panel to tell you about. But when the topic turns to human sustainability – protecting those who work in all parts of the supply chain – the conversation is eerily quiet. 

This is exactly why The Wine Society and Sustainable Wine Roundtable (SWR) has come together to host a series of discussions on the theme of labour exploitation in the trade, the first of which was held yesterday. 

STARTING THE CONVERSATION 

The inaugural step in addressing poor labour standards is accepting they exist, opened panel moderator Dr Peter Stanbury, research director at SWR. “The challenge with labour issues is they’re much more complex [than environmental issues]. They’re much more ingrained in societal issues, and people feel scared talking about them,” he said.  

However, he continued, it is only through a collaborative and open approach that the industry can begin to address them. 

It can be frightening, added Jantine Werdmuller von Elgg, co-CEO of Stronger Together, a programme created to tackle modern slavery in supply chains. But, quoting UK Minister Jess Phillips, she added: “Modern slavery is so prevalent that if businesses are not identifying risks, they are probably not looking hard enough.” 

BEGINNING SIMPLE 

For many producers, distributors and retailers, even starting to think about human labour standards can be disorienting, especially if they are in smaller teams. 

Still, the panel pointed out that this was once also the case for environmental sustainability issues and it can be addressed in a similar way, starting with setting KPIs and opening up a conversation. 

“If that starts with one KPI, that’s okay. You can always expand that out, but it’s important that at the start you know what you want to look at. Then you can monitor that,” said Werdmuller. 

THINKING IN COLLABORATION 

Of course, this isn’t a problem that can be solved in isolation, which is why so much of the panel focused on a collective approach. 

Talking about labour exploitation amongst grape pickers, Allan Sichel, president of the Bordeaux industry body CIVB, used Bordeaux as an example of why a collective approach is needed. He explained that the state in France has said it is “a grower’s responsibility to make sure that people working in the field are treated in a dignified manner”. 

Yet, for small-scale growers, it can be incredibly time and money consuming to try and vet the services of labour providers, who usually find their employees for them and whose job it is to make sure labourers have the correct visa, a safe place to stay and are paid above minimum wage. 

This is why, in France, a charter has been created between the state, labour suppliers and growers, where select labour suppliers are subject to control audits by the state. This way, growers will know which suppliers are ethical to use. 

Anne Jones, Wine GB ambassador, likewise chimed in to support the idea of infrastructure that helps producers find ethical labour. Talking about English growers, Jones said: “There’s always been the idea that [English] harvest time is a cross between a village fête and a garden party, and now the industry is growing up and outsourcing, so we need to consider these issues.” 

The problem, according to Jones, is that in the emerging English wine industry, nobody knows who is responsible for taking care of labour standards. “I think the SWR do a great job at pushing certifications this way. Maybe that will enable us to put a people section into these certification standards,” she said.  

COSTS 

The panel then turned to the relationship between cost and labour exploitation. 

When talking about environmental sustainability, there is often a lot of emphasis on how much money may be saved in the future. Yet, Daniel Hart, director of commerce at Hatch Mansfield, said that the reality of preventing human exploitation is different. Making sure each part of the supply chain is ethical may result in increased bottle prices. But it should still be done. 

“Price, for me, is the biggest influencer of the risks throughout the supply chain,” Hart stated. “The average price of wine in the UK is very low,” and there is pressure to keep costs down, even with increasing tax. 

Despite this, Hart suggested the industry needs to prioritise ethics, something that could be communicated to the consumer through the concept of a fair price. 

FINAL THOUGHTS 

Finishing off the discussion, Lukas Müller, policy officer at Fair and Green, offered some practical advice. 

He reminded the trade that when talking about labour exploitation, we are talking about people who should be communicated with. That means organising written contracts in the language of the people hired, physically visiting the accommodation in which labourers are staying and simply asking in person how they are being treated. 

“In the end, they are people, not resources, even though this doesn’t always seem clear to everyone,” Müller concluded.