Spanish pick French grapes

Press, 19 September 1985, Page 44

Spanish pick French grapes

By

Francois Raitberger

of Reuters, through NZPA Madrid About 60,000 jobless Spanish grape pickers will head for southern France over the next few weeks in western Europe’s biggest seasonal labour migration. Loaded with cured ham, sausages and olive oil to save on food costs and stick to their traditional cooking, they will board special trains bound for the vineyards of Bordeaux and Lan-guedoc-Roussillon. Grape-picking in France, for landless farmhands in impoverished southern Spain, is the only escape from the “dead time”, the lean months between summer crops and winter olive harvesting.

When grape-picking is over in Spain’s sherry vineyards, they follow the ripening pattern northwards to France’s hot Mediterranean coast, then to the cooler Bordeaux area, Adolfo Rivas, spokesman for the Spanish Emigration Institute, said. Most then drift back, but

some trickle further north up the Rhone valley to Burgundy and even Champagne and Alsace. The army of farmhands is vital for winegrowers. Grapes must be picked quickly at the peak of ripeness before they rot in autumn rains. Winegrowers who employ little or no labour all year round need large numbers of workers during the two to threeweek harvest. Rivas said the massive seasonal migration northwards is well organised and controlled by authorities and unions both in Spain and France.

Renfe, the Spanish State railway company, has laid on special trains which will start collecting pickers throughout southern Spain at the end of the month, taking them across the border to France at the rate of 1000 a day. Up to 10,000 will be travelling daily at a midSeptember peak. Over 57,000 Spanish pickers have been hired to work in France

Rivas said 80 per cent had already done a stint in France and 37 per cent had done more than five. About 70 per cent are going back to the same employer, and for some the trip will be a family affair. Rivas said women pickers had married employers’ sons and men had taken French wives back to Spain. In some cases, friendships have been struck up and French employers have spent summer holidays in southern Spain as guests of their pickers. Some winegrowers in Languedoc-Rous-sillon, an area of small estates producing cheap wine, are not much better off than the pickers they employ. Whole families travel to France, as anyone over 16 is allowed to work. For those who leave small children behind, the Spanish government organises nurseries. All pickers have in their pocket a contract from their employer who pays for their train fare to France. They will return at their own expense, but with discounts

of 35 per cent on French railways and 30 per cent on Spanish trains. The job is tough. Bent double over the vines under a fierce sun or cold autumn showers, they will cut grape stalks for at least eight hours a day, sometimes “de sol a sol” (from sunrise to sunset). They are guaranteed to earn at least the legal minimum French hourly wage of just more than SUS 3 (SNZS.6I). After paying for food and lodging, they take home more than SUS6OO (SNZII2O) for an average 20 days’ work. French Labour Ministry officials and representatives from French and Spanish trade unions tour farms to check that pickers get the right wage and adequate lodging. Rivas said lodging was usually fair in the Bordeaux region, where farms are large and produce expensive high-quality wine. There, wealthy landowners have built special facilities to house seasonal labdfr'.

Not so in poorer Lan-guedoc-Roussillon, where lodging can be sordid and without running water.

Rivas said virtually as many pickers were travelling to France as made the journey last year and numbers had only slightly decreased over the last few years.

He expected demand for labour in Languedoc-Rous-sillon to drop soOn and altogether disappear within 10 years as mechanised picking is gradually introduced. Grapes there produce cheap wine for blending or distillation into alcohol and can be handled with little care.

Bordeaux grapes, turned into some of France’s best wines, can only be entrusted to pickers’ hands.

A cartoon in the Madrid daily, “ABC,” recently depicted a Spanish gourmet patriot savouring a glass of wine and saying: “I only drink French wine made from grapes picked by our Andalusian farmhands.'”