Langhe vineyard workers: Alba marches against caporalato

Hundreds of people marched through Alba on Saturday 24 October in support of Langhe vineyard workers, protesting against caporalato, the illegal gangmaster system that supplies labour to farms. The bishop of Alba, Marco Brunetti, told the crowd that “the farmhand comes before the bottle of wine”.

The march was organised by the diocesan Caritas with the CGIL, CISL and UIL unions, the anti-mafia association Libera and Arci Cinema Vekkio, according to the local weekly La Guida, which put the crowd at more than a thousand. It set off from the Caritas reception centre in via Pola and ended in piazza San Paolo with speeches.

“Exploitative caporalato is not only a crime, it is an offence against God and man,” Brunetti said, according to La Guida. He added that housing “is not a luxury” but part of the dignity of work, and called for lasting policies, not emergency fixes.

The person comes before profit, the farmhand before the bottle of wine.

What the Caritas harvest report found

The protest followed L’altra vendemmia (The other harvest), a report published by the Diocese of Alba on 12 October. According to Caritas, more than 6,000 people worked this year’s harvest in the Langhe and Roero, about 3,000 of them seasonal. Its volunteers counted 16 makeshift camps and shelters, the most they have recorded, and reported beds in overcrowded housing let for €200 to €300 a month.

The report lists undeclared work, payslips that do not match the hours worked, pay below union minimums, unpaid wages and no rest days. The diocese says the people Caritas met are fewer than 5% of those working in the rows.

Labour inspection figures cited by the CGIL point the same way, La Guida reported: of 67 farms and contractors checked in the province of Cuneo during the harvest, just under 80% were in breach of the rules, with 31 undeclared workers and 100 health and safety violations.

Langhe vineyard workers and the wine trade

Matteo Ascheri, a winemaker and former president of the consortium that protects Barolo and Barbaresco, rejected the description of wineries as the “first victims” of caporalato, a phrase used by Coldiretti Cuneo, according to Cuneodice. “The problem is systemic,” he said, proposing that producers who commit certain violations lose the right to use the wines’ collective brand.

In July the Cuneo prefecture renewed an anti-caporalato protocol, signed by the Barolo and Roero consortia, farm organisations and unions, which creates a voluntary register of labour contractors and an ethical label for wineries that hire through them. The march organisers are asking for direct hiring, stronger job centres, public coordination of housing and transport, and more inspectors.

The march came as white truffle prices climb with the drought and autumn visitors fill Alba.