Robertson Winery Accused Of Slavery-Like Practices In South Africa
, November 4th, 2016 | ||
"Bitter Grapes—Slavery in the Vineyards," a new Danish television documentary, alleges that many South African wineries pay their workers less than the legal minimum wage; discourages them from unionizing; and exposes them to toxic pesticides. The documentary singles out Robertson's Winery in the Western Cape region.
The film, which was made by journalist Tom Heinemann, claims that workers are often paid R105 ($7.76) for a 12-hour shift and that living conditions for workers are abysmal. "I saw very very depressing things. I saw housing that was literally falling apart, rain coming down the roofs," Heinemann told 702, a Danish radio station. "I saw people have to live off water from a drain ditch alongside a road. I saw toilets that were locked up, so they had to walk into the vineyards to do their toilet." "People say apartheid is gone. But if you go into our rural areas, apartheid is still very much alive," one interviewee told Heinemann in the documentary. Nor do the workers have anybody to advocate for them. "The [vineyard owners] don't like unions," Deneco Dube, paralegal adviser to the Commercial Stevedoring Agricultural and Allied Workers' Union (CSAAWU), told Heinemann. "They will find the leader of the union, or someone speaking out on behalf of the workers. Lawful or not, he will dismiss them. He believes that when you cut the leadership's head, the whole body is nothing any more." South Africa has produced wine since 1655 when Jan van Riebeeck of the Netherlandscolonized the land of the Khoikhoi people in the Western Cape region on behalf of the Dutch East India Company. The vineyards were set up to supply ships sailing from Europe to Asia. As the Dutch expanded their presence, they brought slaves to work on their farms and vineyards. Since the days of colonization, the vineyard workers have never been well treated. Asurvey of their conditions as recently as 1996 estimated that less than 50 percent of workers had electricity, 34 percent had no running water and 27 percent did not have any toilets. Indeed, for most of the time that grapes have been cultivated in the Cape, workers were partly paid with wine instead of money, a practice that was outlawed in 1961, but Heinemann says continues informally to this day. In 2011, Human Rights Watch published a report titled 'Ripe with Abuse: Human Rights Conditions in South Africa’s Fruit and Wine Industries,' based on 260 interviews. "The wealth and well-being these workers produce shouldn’t be rooted in human misery," Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said in a press release at the time. "The government, and the industries and farmers themselves, need to do a lot more to protect people who live and work on farms." But five years later, apparently, not much has changed. Heinemann singles out Robertson's Winery, which is located on the Breede river in the Langeberg mountains. Some 220 Robertson's vineyard workers have been on strike since August, demanding a minimum monthly wage of R8,500 ($628). The vineyard has countered with an offer that is a little less than half that amount - R4,000 a month ($295.50) The winery has responded by saying that the documentary was biased because it relied heavily on CSAAWU which is backing the worker's strike. "Robertson Winery views the documentary 'Bitter Grapes' as a one sided and somewhat superficial depiction of the circumstances of the South African wine sector," Anton Cilliers, CEO of Roberston wrote in a comment on the company website. "The documentary chose to pursue the false narrative that Robertson Winery is party to payment of ‘slave wages and apartheid practices.' So too, the fact that employees of Robertson Winery have access to free medical facilities as well as access to housing subsidies/loans and opportunities to further their education, was simply overlooked and ignored in the documentary." The winery has also enlisted support from the industry. "I would very much like to emphasise that Robertson Winery is not tantamount to slavery," Martin Horwitz, the head of corporate social responsibility at PrimeWine, the company that imports Robertson wines in Sweden. "Salaries are relative and reviewed annually by SA8000-certified accountants. Additionally, salaries are reviewed alongside experience, job description, gender and ethnicity." Despite these statements, since Heinemann's film aired in October, a number of Danish supermarkets have either taken Robertson wines off their shelves or canceled future import orders, such as Dagrofa, Kiwi, Meny and Spar. |
A key witness has admitted under oath that he lied on behalf of Chevron, the California oil multinational, when the company sued to overturn a $9.5 billion verdict for pollution of the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Between 1964 and 1990, a New York company named Texaco drilled for oil in the Amazon and dumped more than 16 billion gallons of toxic waste into rivers and streams. In 1993, 47 Amazonian farmers, representing 30,000 Ecuadorian farmers and indigenous tribal peoples, sued the company in a U.S. federal court in New York.
Texaco, which was later acquired by Chevron, convinced the U.S. courts tomove the case to Ecuador. Unfortunately for the company, almost two decades after the case was filed, Ecuadorian Judge Nicolas Zambrano ruled that Chevron should pay to clean up the toxic mess. Instead the company counter-sued in New York claiming that the verdict was obtained by fraud and coercion.
Last year, Lewis Kaplan, a U.S. federal judge, issued a 500 page ruling that concluded that he had found "clear and convincing evidence" that environmental activists and lawyers helped Zambrano write the verdict in return for money. Now it turns out that the opposite was true.
In his ruling Kaplan relied heavily on the testimony of Alberto Guerra, a former Ecuadorian judge, who claimed that Stephen Donziger, the lawyer for the villagers, had helped Zambrano write the verdict. Kaplan dismissed the fact that Guerra was being paid $12,000 a month by Chevron as well as being supplied with a personal lawyer and a car under the company 'witness-protection program.'
Separately, in 2009, Chevron had brought an international arbitration case against the Ecuadorian government which is still ongoing. At an arbitration hearing in Washington DC earlier this year, Guerra retracted his statements to Kaplan, according to a 776 page transcript obtained by Vice News and Courthouse News.
"And among the ways you tried to leverage your position was to falsely tell the Chevron representatives that the Plaintiffs had offered you $300,000; isn't that right?" asked Eric Bloom, a lawyer for the government of Ecuador.
"Yes, sir. I lied there. I recognize it. I wasn't truthful. That statement was never made by the representatives of the Plaintiffs."
Guerra: "Sincerely, if that situation ensued, I was hoping to obtain a financial benefit of some sort myself."
