Like all good breakouts, timing is everything. It is precisely 6pm on May 15th 2020 when Juan meets up with Mariannick in a little street adjacent to the house where he has been living at Labouheyre in south-west France. This large building, with exposed beams and located in a small village surrounded by fields and pine trees, has an agreeable setting. Trees partially conceal the front of the building while at the back a bay window looks out onto a garden. But these lodgings are anything but pleasant. Inside the cupboards are broken, the paintwork is faded and the toilet blocs are stained.
It is here that Juan, from Colombia, lives with around forty other seasonal workers, most of them also South American, spread between 19 small bedrooms. Some share their room with two, three, four or even five others. A few are lucky enough to have a room to themselves. But all work in the fields owned by Fermes Larrère, one of the main farming groups in the region, into whom Mediapart has carried out a lengthy investigation together with partners German newspaper Der Spiegel and Euronews, in a project overseen by Lighthouse Reports.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Mariannick and Juan had been phoning each other practically every day for several weeks. Mariannick, who is French, is employed by Ruelle, an association which helps victims of modern slavery. This afternoon on May 15th she is waiting behind the wheel of her car, ready to set off, while Juan stuffs all his belongings into his backpack and little suitcase on wheels. “I waited until there was no one around before I left,” said the boy, who has worked here for two months with no contract.
Juan said that he has been badly treated. He told Mariannick of his 12-hour shifts with just a break for lunch, the injuries he had picked up and the constant pressure from his bosses. She had become fed up with waiting for the authorities to intervene, so decided to drive the 80km from her home in Bordeaux to spirit Juan away from the place. The association took the youngster in for a few days while the Colombian embassy in France got ready to repatriate him.
In an email dated May 26th 2020, which Mediapart has seen, the embassy thanked the young woman for helping a “Colombian citizen identified as a victim of human slavery” and assuring her that Juan was heading home “on a humanitarian flight”. His witness statement, which Mediapart has seen, is now in the hands of France's workplace inspectorate the Inspection du Travail.
Yet in this south-west corner of France, Fermes Larrère are seen as a model farming organisation. In 2017 they had an annual turnover of 47 million euros and they have become the leading producer of organic carrots in Europe. Their produce can be found on the shelves of the biggest supermarket chains including Auchan, who have promoted them in-store. In 2018 the company received more than 360,000 euros in European Union subsidies under various headings.
The farm, which was created by Bertrand Larrère, father of the current managing director Patrick, can also point to its environmental commitment. In 2014 it started a methane plant with the aim of producing biogas from organic waste, and there are solar panels on parts of its land.
But there are also the seasonal workers. Often migrants, they are also, indirectly, employees who are under contract to an 'employers group' to which Larrère belongs. And some of them paint a rather different picture of life on the group's farms. Twelve former workers, most of them South Americans, have told Mediapart of gruelling shifts, verbal abuse, austere living conditions and low pay. Juan, Martin*, Angelica, Matteo, Leslie, Julia*, Sergio*, Mohammed*, Simon*, Karim* and Nabil – at their request, Mediapart is not using the real names of all of them – describe a system where everything is done to ensure that the workers cost as little as possible.
According to Mediapart's information, several former workers at Larrère have made formal complaints to the Inspection du Travail. The Inspection has already sent a report concerning alleged “obstruction of the CHSCT” - the workplace's mandatory health and safety committee – to prosecutors at nearby Mont-de-Marsan, and other cases are said to be in the pipeline. Both the Inspection du Travail and the prosecution authorities declined to comment to Mediapart about the cases.
One of the most serious claims by workers is that their working hours have been under-counted. For example, Julia was officially logged as having worked 70 hours in the fields and paid 660 euros, but she insists she worked more than double that time.
Patrick Larrère, managing director of Fermes Larrère, said that his company were “not the employers” and that it was down to the “service providers” whom they used to “respect the legal obligations”. He said that the “payslips” were “produced” by the employers' group. Patrick Larrère added: “The employees' hours are logged according to a clocking-in system.” It was “very easy” for an employee to “make a complaint if an error had been made”, he added.
The company acknowledged that on a general level there were some dysfunctions in the system, though it downplayed their importance. The managing director said that when he had heard about the investigation he had immediately ordered a survey among his workforce. “We've picked up things to deal with, that we are ready to take on board or which we are going to ask our partners to take on board,” said Patrick Larrère. Already an “ethics charter” was being drawn up, and the group had been in touch with audit firms who would carry out “spot checks”. (For the company's full response, in French, see More).
“We've had this company in our sights for a few years,” said Jean-Albert Guidou, secretary of the federation at the CGT trade union which deals with foreign workers. The trade unionist pointed to the “systematic” nature of the poor treatment inflicted on seasonal workers across Europe, particularly foreigners. He said that the workers are “paying the cost of a price war”.
Juan's story began several months ago in Colombia when he first came across Fermes Larrère. A Facebook page “Trabajar en Francia” was publicising jobs in south-west France. There was a telephone number listed. The young engineering student from Cali had just obtained his 'working holiday visa', which allows young Colombians and others outside the European Union to work in Europe for a fixed period. His visa allows him to work in Europe for a year.
Having just finished his studies, Juan dreamt of earning some money while at the same time learning French. Many seasonal workers to whom Mediapart spoke had similar plans. Matteo and Angelica, both also from Colombia, was initially supposed to be going to work for an individual in the Paris region; Martin and Leslie had been due to work in tourism near Nice on France's Mediterranean coast. But the coronavirus epidemic scuppered those plans. “We had no money left, we had to work,” said Matteo. For many it was their first experience of agricultural work. Martin, for one, found it a brutal experience. “I knew that the work was hard but I thought that the conditions in France would be better. I realise that I was wrong,” he said. Mohammed, Karim and Nabil, meanwhile, were more used to it. Originally from North Africa, all three had worked in Spain before coming to France where the conditions were supposedly better.
For Juan the first contact was welcoming; he spoke to a recruitment agency, Gena, who often work with Fermes Larrère. They did not respond to Mediapart's questions.
The people Juan dealt with were Latin American, and they reassured him. The conditions as stated were attractive. He was verbally promised a payment of 1,500 euros a month. “I was promised 2,000 euros a month,” declared Simon in a recent message on a Facebook page used by several tens of thousands of Spanish-speaking seasonal workers. No one explained to the workers that the contracts were not signed by Gena or Larrère but by the employers group.
Verbal abuse
In messages seen by Mediapart, a person who introduced themselves as working for the recruitment agency told Juan at the time that the basic working week would be 35 hours, with overtime paid for extra hours worked. Potential recruits were all told they would be accommodated in an “hotel” in Labouheyre in south-west France.
“When I arrived there were no sheets, no blankets, no pillows,” recalled Juan. Leslie said: “We had to buy everything, even cooking utensils.” Fermes Larrère have since told Mediapart: “The internal survey revealed a lack of certain equipment, which we're going to deal with as quickly as possible.” The workers also said that the toilet facilities were dirty as were the bathrooms and the bedrooms. Some rooms had bunk beds, which is against the law.
“The flow of demand for accommodation is sometimes difficult to manage, particularly in the summer season,” Fermes Larrère told Mediapart. “We are currently working with the Aquitaine region and the Agence Nationale de l’Habitat (ANAH) [editor's note, national housing agency] in order to resolve this clear lack of accommodation.” Nonetheless the workers have 220 euros deducted at source from their pay packets to cover the rent. This is paid to a property company which is separate from the farm group but owned by one of its bosses.
The living conditions in an old 'hotel' at Saugnacq-et-Muret, which is also in the Landes département or county in south-west France, are no more pleasant for Fermes Larrère's workers. There were no sheets here either, said Simon, who stayed there in the spring of 2020, and nor were there any cooking utensils. Karim also pointed out that there was no heating, even in winter, and that the electricity supply was intermittent. Karim, who worked in one of the group's packaging factories, complained to the Inspection du Travail in June 2020 in a bid to get several months of rent reimbursed. “In fact it costs you money to come and work there,” said Karim, who quit his job there two months ago.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
Nabil recalled that back in 2018 the accommodation at Saugnacq-et-Muret did not even have a working shower. When the young Moroccan first came to the farm in December 2017 he had no accommodation and no money to pay for it. He slept outside for a couple of nights and then in a shed at the railway station in nearby Ychoux. Videos that he sent Mediapart confirm this. During that winter the night-time temperature fell below freezing and his tent was covered in frost. He insisted that Fermes Larrère knew about his situation. “When I asked them for accommodation the boss told me 'First you have to work, then we'll see.'” The company told Mediapart: “We were not made aware of this situation.”
“The employment agency had told me that I would only be working seven hours a day,” recalled Matteo, whose partner Angelica was told the same. “And that work would never start before 7am.” The young man quickly became disenchanted. He said that from the very first day in the Landes there was a knock on the door at 5am and he was told to get up to go to work. Things did not get any better once he was up. Weeding the fields is backbreaking work but Leslie said the workers were made to keep standing until the foreman in charge in the fields allowed them to sit. The company has denied this.
All the workers said that breaks were unpredictable apart from the regular half-hour for lunch at midday. Fermes Larrère denies this too. “Sometimes we worked six hours at a stretch in the afternoons,” said Simon. The workers said their working days started at 6.30am and went on until 6pm, which is longer than allowed by law.
“In agriculture a farm can get the legal duration of work increased but they still have to make a request to the Inspection du Travail,” said Patrick Lasserre-Cathala, deputy director for the Inspection du Travail in the Landes. Fermes Larrère's managing director Patrick Larrère admitted to Mediapart that they had not done so. “Because of absenteeism and the vagaries of the weather we do sometimes ask for extra hours, while respecting all the legal obligations as far as possible,” he added.
“We even had to ask permission to go to the toilet,” said Simon, from Argentina. “Just for safety reasons,” responded the company.
In the end Martin's knees began to suffer, while working one frosty spring day Juan lost the feeling in his hands and feet. According to several workers they also had to put up with harsh, often insulting words from their bosses. “They called us bastards, always telling us that we weren't working fast enough,” said Leslie. Juan said: “They told me that Colombians were useless. That I was just here to sell cocaine.”
Based on its in-house survey, Fermes Larrère now says that “fewer than 5% of those surveyed report isolated verbal attitudes which seem inappropriate”. Since then “every appropriate measure” had been taken, the group said.
At the end of May 2010 some of the seasonal workers fainted in the heat of the fields. One was Matteo. “One day I didn't feel well. I asked to go back to the car, my head was spinning,” he said. According to Simon he was not the only one. “You often saw people vomiting,” he recalled. At the end of that day Matteo was told that the company had terminated his contract and he had to leave Labouheyre. “If you take time off sick there, they're no longer interested in you and they sack you,” said Sergio.
Sergio, who now lives in Rennes in western France, worked for the company in the spring of 2019. At the time the group proudly unveiled its weeding platform. The workers lay next to each other on this platform as it was towed by a tractor. This allowed them to be close to the ground without being bent in two. All they had to do was stretch out their arms to pull out the weeds. This method was supposed to improve working conditions, in particular by reducing back pain. “We started using these gantries to improve things in 2018, working with an ergonomics company,” said the group. Sergio, however, has very different memories. “You had the lot: you swallowed dust and you had a bad back. And you couldn't stop working,” he said.
These seasonal workers have all moved on. Matteo, Angelica, Martin and Leslie went to the eastern plains of the French Mediterranean island of Corsica where they have found better working conditions. The accommodation is provided free of charge by the company and they have all the utensils they need to cook. Moreover, the working day is a maximum of seven hours.
Diego is not so lucky. “Look where I live. Excuse my language but these are shitty conditions,” said the young Colombian in a message he sent to Mediapart at the end of June. He also went to Corsica where he is lodged in a mobile home heated by the sun and which lies on bare earth. It is the third farm where he has gone to work and is the “worst”, he said. Simon is still in the Bordeaux area where he is signed up for the blueberry picking season. Julia worked in the vineyards before finding a job in a convenience store.
Not everyone has a job. Karim and Nabil discuss their grievances as they travel up and down south-west France looking for work. Nabil fears that his complaint to the Inspection du Travail may have blacklisted him in the whole region, though there is no way of knowing this for sure. Meanwhile he has found a new place to stay which is close to his former 'hotel' at Saugnacq-et-Muret, and the same price. This time he has a room to himself. “That makes it better for a start,” he said.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter