“Cati Agudo and Mateo Martínez have just arrived in what will be their place of work for the next eight weeks: a winery in Saint-Roman-de-Malegarde, a locality in the south-east of France, near the Italian border.” The Spanish daily The country looks through a report on these Spaniards, often from Andalusia, who, each year, go to France on the occasion of the grape harvest.
This year, after two years paralyzed by the pandemic, nearly 15,000 day laborers will temporarily leave Spain for France, making it the largest external migration flow in the country.
“Making the grape harvest is hard, but not as hard as picking the olives”, report Agudo to The country. This offers day laborers a temporary job that they cannot find in Spain, and allows them to obtain a double retirement pension thanks to their years of contributions in France. For twenty to twenty-five days, the pickers work in the vines for a minimum wage of 10.85 euros gross per hour. It is 3 euros more than in Spain, specifies The country, and they can go as far as doubling their pay with a few overtime hours. In addition, when they are not housed by their employers, they can benefit from housing assistance provided by the French State.
“Attractive” working conditions
“The French grape harvest is attractive for Spanish workers, because in Spain the conditions offered in the agricultural sector should be much more decent, Explain Lucía García Quismondo, secretary of the UGT-FICA union. Collective agreements are still not respected, operators do not pay the minimum wage, they do not declare the actual days, which goes to the detriment of workers’ rights.”
This is the reason why, despite mechanization, the number of Spanish day laborers working in France remains globally similar. “The grape harvest in France is a model to follow when it comes to seasonal labor migration”, concludes the Spanish union CC OO.