A confidential audit report from Norwegian government-owned alcoholic beverage retailer Vinmonopolet has uncovered harassment, unionization prohibitions and salaries below the minimum wage at several of its wine producers in South Africa.

By: Peter Kennworthy posted on Afrika.dk

The report is based on inspections of 22 South African wine facilities in March and April. Is was prepared for Vinmonopolet by American safety consulting and certification company UL, and conducted “to investigate and identify social compliance gaps within the wine supply chain in the Western Cape Province.”

Vinmonopolet is working hard to ensure that offending producers improve conditions and live up to their ethical guidelines, the Norwegian company insists.

In June, Vinmonopolet sold over 100.000 litres of South African wine of a total of over 6 million litres of wine. Vinmonopolet (literally “the Wine Monopoly”) is the only retailer allowed to sell wine in Norway.

Harassment, lack of training and illegal wages
According to Vinmonopolet’s audit report, nine of the 22 inspected facilities “did not hold health and safety meetings regularly,” employees on four facilities experienced “verbal harassment and physical harassment,” three facilities “had not issued employees with employment contracts” and “paid employees below the minimum wage,” and two “prohibited employees from joining trade unions of their choice.”

Four facilities “had deductions that were more than the stipulated legal limit,” and three “did not provide occupational health and safety training including pesticide handling training to employees.”

“The Client provided the audited facilities with the opportunity to correct reported findings before the end of the project,” the report stated in its concluding remarks.

Concerns must be resolved
In December 2016 Vinmonopolet had demanded that eight concerns related to worker’s rights, health and safety issues, wages and grievance mechanisms must be resolved. This was following the screening of “Bitter Grapes,” Danish investigative journalist Tom Heinemann’s highly critical documentary on the wine industry in the Western Cape, on Norwegian national television.

According to Senior Business Executive and CSR-responsible at Vinmonopolet Kristian Hogstad, Vinmonopolet does not wish to disclose which wine facilities were inspected by UL because they wish to focus on improving conditions and act in regard to the workers on the inspected farms.

A follow-up process and new inspections will be carried out in the future to ensure that conditions have improved, including a Vinmonopolet visit in the fall to ensure that this is indeed the case, Hogstad says.

Vinmonopolet continues to sell wine from the Western Cape, however, for instance from its bestseller Robertson Winery (not one of the inspected farms, according to Hogstad), stating that they are working with importers and the South African producers and unions to improve conditions. In Heinemann’s documentary, Robertson Winery was one of the main offenders.

Contracts may be annulled
Vinmonopolet has previously annulled contracts with importers and stopped selling products on several occasions, when producers have not complied with Vinmonopolet’s ethical guidelines. These include the right to unionization, a decent and legal wage, and a healthy and safe working environment.

“Our goal is to contribute to improvements in the supply chain and not rid ourselves of producers that do not live up to our ethical guidelines. This is subject to breeches of our guidelines being rectified, however. If not, we will consider revoking agreements,” says Hogstad.

The criteria for avoiding having ones contract revoked is to correct guideline breaches within at reasonable period of time (depending on how quickly the breach can feasibly be corrected), allow future inspections  to take place, and generally give Vinmonopolet the information they ask for, Hogstad adds.

“Annulling an agreement prematurely will not necessarily help improve the situation, as the producer loses an important source of income and might exploit their workers even more to compensate. This must be weighed against the risk we take by continuing to sell products that do not live up to our guidelines, and whether we succeed in convincing people that it is better to give producers the time to make these improvements.”

Generally, Hogstad says that in the future Vinmonopolet is planning to improve its presence in South Africa, continue and improve dialogue with the unions, and inform and train producers and importers in regard to its guidelines.

Improvements needed for years
But on the face of it, improvements in the standards of several South African wine farms have been necessary for some years now.

A 2011 report from Human Rights Watch called “Ripe with Abuse – Human Rights Conditions in South Africa’s Fruit and Wine Industries” exposed “obstacles to union formation,” “long,” “gruelling”  and “harsh” working conditions, and workers being denied “benefits to which they are legally entitled” and exposed to toxic pesticides without “adequate safety equipment,” as well as earning “among the lowest wages in South Africa.”

Tom Heinemann’s documentary started both a media storm and an array of inspections of offending farms by both retailers such as Vinmonopolet, Swedish Systembolaget and Danish Dagrofa, as well as by local authorities in the Western Cape. He agrees that improvements need to be made.

“For decades – if not centuries –conditions in the vineyards in South Africa have been appalling. My hope is that the new focus from authorities, buyers and importers in investigating the industry more rigorously can and will make changes. If not, there is no way out but to stop buying wine from farms that do not want to learn that workers are not their property that they can treat to slave-like conditions,” says Heinemann.

Great honor for our film.

We received two awards at the festival.

Read more here (in French)

http://www.oenovideo.com

 

Great news. It has just been announced that we won a new award.

The revealing story in the documentary BITRE DRUER (SOUR GRAPES) about the slave-like conditions for vineyard workers in South Africa, is a textbook example of a cooperation in Nordic investigative journalism at its best, according to editor Fredrik Laurin from SVT’s Uppdrag Granskning (UG). 

By: Henrik Hartmann

The last decade has seen a sharp rise in wine imports from South Africa, especially in Denmark and Sweden. In Denmark, imports have risen by 78 % and Systembolaget in Sweden
is now South Africa’s 3rd biggest wine customer. Wine from South Africa is cheap and consumers love it, but there’s a dark side to the story.

Tom Heinemann, the investigating journalist from Denmark, has produced several documentaries for Nordic public service companies. Recently, while completing another programme series for Nordvision, he got a tip about slave-like conditions for vineyard workers in several of South Africa’s vineyards. With development funding from SVT and DR Sales, he took
a research trip to South Africa. What he saw and heard con rmed the tip. The working and living conditions for vineyard labourers was unacceptable. He pitched the story to the investigative journalist group in Nordvision, and then received production support from DR, NRK and SVT, from Danida (Dansk development aid) and resources from the Nordvision fund.

Thorough Research 

Heinemann and his photographer Lotte la Cour went to South Africa three times to gather stories and cover wine production from start to nish: spraying, harvesting and cutting. Heinemann says:

“When we had identi ed where some of the wine that ends up in the Nordics came from, we went around visiting the relevant vineyards to talk to former and current employees Getting 

permission to lm was hard right from the start Everywhere we went we were refused entry and we had to work with really tiny cameras so as not to cause alarm ”
Before the third and nal production trip, Heinemann sent questions around to all the farms he wanted to visit and owners he wanted to interview. The response was an audible silence. None of the managers wanted to meet the TV crew.

Thorough Safety 

Safety precautions on the nal trip had to be thorough because a few months previously a couple of SVT journalists had been imprisoned in Zambia. It is also not unusual for people and journalists to be attacked in South Africa.

Fredrik Laurin, chief editor at UG, explains:

“We equipped Tom and his photographer with a project phone that had a tracking function, which we use in situations that may involve threats or where we know we have to be extra careful They used the phone daily and checked in regularly to report where they were and what was happening Back in the editorial o ce at UG in Gothenburg, we monitored the tra c from the project phone and talked to them about the di erent conditions ” 

It was particularly at the end, when two of the vineyard owners – with intervention from the national wine certi cation label entity – agreed to meet the TV crew that the situation grew very tense. The two vineyard owners had come only to make threats and to tell the journalists o . They had no intention of being involved in the programme.

Cooperation Between Danish External Producer
and Uppdrag Granskning (SVT)
Fredrik Laurin at UG in SVT can’t see any particular di erence between whether a project is in-house, outsourced or with a Swedish or Danish producer. He explains:
“We follow quite a strict, established pattern with the editor, reporter and the ‘devil’s advocate,’ who reviews the entire script line by line in a set standardised form where all factual information and controversial conditions must have a footnote and be fully sourced with further supportive evidence ” 

Major Debate in Sweden 

SVT were delighted with the story about the South Africa wine and reactions to the documentary resulted in an almost bigger debate in Sweden than in Denmark. Laurin says:
“We had a major debate in Sweden, which is slightly unusual 

for a UG project Part of the reason was that Systembolaget and the importer, who also represents Robertson Winery, chose a proactive press style and commented on and denied information before we released it This raised the expectations of the programme and awareness in other media ” 

Heinemann was also pleased with the documentary and has spent over a month being interviewed by varioius international and South African medias:
“I think this lm will have a major impact We can already see how several South African authorities have highlighted a long list of conditions in the South African wine industry, all of which are being criticised My local contacts and trade unions in South Africa tell me that our lm is a gamechanger when it comes to changing working and living conditions for the better” 

Recipe for Nordic Success 

Laurin sees major bene ts in Nordvision being able to work cooperatively on such complex productions, in which investigative stories invariably are.
“Being able to cooperate when you have subject matters that are universal or have cross-national interests, is only ever positive We can do it cheaper and maybe even better Personally, I think BITRE DRUER is a textbook example of how it should be done ” 

BITRE DRUER is Heinemann ́s fth Nordic co-production show in 10 years. He explains: “I know that the Nordic documentary editorial team wants a national angle That’s why it’s important to have a universal story, but also a story with a thread that leads to two or more Nordic countries As a producer you need to be able to deliver a modular story so that each documentary team can tailor it to create their own national version of the programme ” 

Major improvements for workers on one of the big exporters

By Tom Heinemann

 

Even if there is an upper limit to everything, there is good news for some of the farm workers at one of the big vineyards in South Africa.

After exposing numerous violations of national law and the Swedish alcohol monopoly, Systembolaget’s ethical code of conduct pictured in the documentary film, “Bitter Grapes – Slavery in the vineyards”, some good things have started to happen.

After the film was aired in Scandinavia in October a storm broke out – especially in the South African media. After denying most – calling the documentary film “biased” and “one-sided” – industry bodies, importers and Systembolaget ensured the consumers that more independent inspections would be intensified.

However, the authorities overturned all the good intentions. Shortly after the film was aired, the Department of Labour along with the local government in the Western Cape went on an un-announced tour of inspections at the very same farms that were pictured in the documentary film.

And the results were depressing. On all five farms a number of corrective actions had to be taken. Some within two weeks others within 60 days.

One of the farms was Leeuwenkuil Family Vineyards, one of the big sellers at Systembolaget in Sweden. More than 30 different vineyards are producing grapes to Leeuwenkuil.

The inspectors from the Department of Labour visited three of the Leewuenkuil farms in the area and where one of them was part of the documentary.

Here they found a number of violations that apparently had been going on for years.

After the Department of Labour did their inspection at the three local Leewenkuil-farms they had to improve the following:

* Demolition of one or two houses that was not fit for people to live in as there were fear for that the houses could collapse.

* Leeuwenkuil must comply with the Basic Conditions of Employment Act concerning sick leave, as workers were not paid – even when they had made a written sick-leave document as stipulated in the law.

* Removal of “open” electrical wires that was endangering the lives and safety for workers and children

* The room where small children were taken care of during working hours had to me moved as it was in the same building where the chemicals and other pesticides were stored.

* Full stop of the farm shop (apparently owned by the wife of the owner)) as it was charging much over the normal rates and that it was therefore the huge deductions were made.

* Health and safety equipment must be handed out to the workers.

* The quality of drinking water had to be improved immediately

Both the importer of Leewenkuil to Scandinavia as well as the local representative of the Union CSAAWU, confirms that all the issues have been settled to the benefit of the workers.

However, two issues are still in progress. One is the fact that some of the workers for three years have paid rent for houses that didn’t live up to the legislation. Therefore the Department of Labour has demanded that the company have to pay back the money to the workers.

Finally, it is also a demand, that some of large deductions that were made on the workers monthly pay slips have to be paid back to the workers.

While the official inspections was commented by the local authorities, the Swedish alcohol monopoly, Systembolaget do not wish to comment on their own findings. According to the press officer from Systembolaget, Ida Ingerö, 11 inspections at various farms belonging to Leeuwenkuil were made during the fall:

“Regarding the results and what needs to be done is part of the business relations between us and our suppliers and the Swedish importers. Therefore we do not hand these plans out to others.”

 

Still a long way to go

Even if Deputy Secretary General, Karel Swart from CVSAAWU welcomes the many improvements for the workers at Leeuwenkuil as a “major victory after six years of battle”, he still describes the life of Leeuwenkuil workers is equal to the life of a slave:

“The owner Willie Dreyer still treats many of his workers as slaves. He acts very rude and keeps on insulting the workers. If we don’t keep up the pressure, he will continue to do so. This man belongs to the heritage of racism and Apartheid and if we don’t step up the pressure on him, he will continue to act like this”

When confronted with the complaints from the workers, the owner of Leeuwenkuil, Willie Dreyer denies all allegations. In a written response, he states that any “ (…) false allegations and negative communications via the media may have a detrimental effect on our business (…)”

Therefore Willie Dreyer will “(…) not hesitate to take legal action should it be required.”