Moroccan Woman’s Fight for Justice Highlights Exploitation in French Agriculture

Arriving from Morocco to Spain at 14, Yasmine had worked in ready-to-wear in Barcelona, then in the Canary Islands where she was responsible for a store. With the 2008 economic crisis, her life turned upside down. She found herself unemployed. A friend told her about Laboral Terra, a temporary employment agency based in Murcia that recruits women to work on farms in southern France. After exchanging via WhatsApp with the company managers who promised her an interesting salary and reassured her that her transport to France, as well as her accommodation and meals would be taken care of on site, Yasmine and a friend embarked for France "for a year, no more, just to make some money," relays the newspaper l’Humanité.

Upon their arrival at the Avignon bus station on December 31, 2011, their disappointment was total: no Laboral Terra representative was present to welcome them. They would spend more than a week waiting for the company managers. And then, it was the descent into hell. Transferred to the farms, they started working without an employment contract and in unacceptable conditions for a salary below the minimum wage. Yasmine and her friend say they were also victims of physical violence, harassment and sexual blackmail. The two women lived through hell for a good seven years.

"One day, Ahmed, one of the Laboral Terra managers, drove me in a car and then suddenly stopped by the roadside and started forcibly kissing me, touching my breasts, putting my hand on his genitals. I screamed at him to stop, to take me home. He said to me: ’If you sleep with me when I ask you to, I’ll give you 300 euros a month.’ I flatly refused and he eventually took me home. I was in shock," she confides. For having rejected this manager’s advances, Yasmine is suspended and regularly confronted by other workers complicit with the managers. After yet another attack in the shower, she hits her head and loses consciousness. "There, I told myself that this couldn’t go on anymore and with four other people, two women and two men, we went to knock on the door of the CGT, whose number we had found on the Internet."

Thus, in 2017, the five filed a complaint for sexual harassment with the Arles labor court, then with the Avignon criminal court. Yasmine is the only one who agreed to testify openly, despite the physical and psychological violence, death threats and pressure she suffered after her denunciations. From the beginning of the trial, Laboral Terra declared bankruptcy to escape prosecution. The criminal appeal trial opens this Thursday, May 22, at the Avignon court. The Moroccan woman, who moves with a crutch, intends to remind the court that she and the four other plaintiffs have never been heard during the seven years of legal proceedings. Despite her fragile health, she is determined to go all the way. "Anyway, I’ve already lost my health and my life: now I want to put my last strength into winning this battle."