Up to 15,000 Spanish farm workers will leave for France’s grape harvest this summer

Thousands of Spanish farm workers are expected to head to France in the coming weeks for the grape harvest, drawn by higher pay, shorter workweeks and employer-paid travel and lodging that unions say still make the French campaign more attractive than picking grapes at home.

Spain’s two main unions, Comisiones Obreras, known as CCOO, and the Unión General de Trabajadores, or UGT, estimate that between 12,000 and 15,000 Spanish workers will take part in this year’s French harvest. CCOO said around 75% of them will come from Andalusia, with the largest groups leaving from the provinces of Granada and Jaén. Several hundred more are expected from towns across Córdoba province, especially from the rural Los Pedroches area.

The movement begins in late August and returns each summer, even as the total number of workers has fallen in recent years because of lower grape production in some regions and the wider use of mechanical harvesting in France. Union officials say the flow remains one of the largest seasonal labor migrations leaving Spain.

Many of the workers come from small towns where agricultural jobs are unstable and poorly paid. In Córdoba, unions said departures are expected from municipalities including Villanueva de Córdoba, Cardeña, Pozoblanco, Añora, Conquista, Alcaracejos, Belalcázar, Hinojosa del Duque and Dos Torres. Workers also travel from rural parts of Cádiz, Seville and Málaga, as well as from Castilla-La Mancha, Valencia, Murcia and Catalonia.

The main reason is economic. According to UGT and CCOO, much of Spain’s wine sector still pays around the national minimum wage, or about €8.90 gross an hour in the cases cited by the unions, while the French minimum wage stands at €12.32 gross an hour. Javier Velasco, secretary of UGT’s agrifood sector, said that without overtime a grape picker in France can earn roughly €2,150 a month, close to twice Spain’s monthly minimum wage.

The difference widens when overtime is included. A full-time workweek in Spain is generally 40 hours. In France, the legal workweek is 35 hours, so extra hours start earlier. Union officials said that hours worked above 35 and up to 43 are typically paid at a 25% premium, and hours beyond 43 at a 50% premium. Weekend work can also add to take-home pay.

For many workers, the other big advantage is that employers in France usually cover transportation and housing during the harvest. Vicente Jiménez, CCOO’s national representative for the farm sector, said that after 19 or 20 days of work, many laborers return to Spain with around €2,000 in hand because they have had few expenses during the campaign. That is hard to match in a local harvest in Spain, where workers often have to pay for transport and accommodation themselves if they travel to another region.

CCOO also said French rules can reduce some social security contributions for seasonal workers, another factor that improves net earnings. Unions argue that the gap reflects a long-running difference between labor standards in the two countries. Jiménez said France has maintained a much higher minimum wage for years, while Spain started from a lower base and, despite improvements in the past decade, has not closed the gap in agriculture.

The appeal of France comes at a time when Spain’s own farm sector is struggling to recruit workers in some areas. Union officials say fewer Spaniards want seasonal farm jobs because the work is physically demanding, campaigns are shorter and more irregular, and housing is hard to find for people who move between autonomous regions for temporary jobs. Climate change has added pressure by reducing yields in some harvests and shortening the length of campaigns, making it harder for workers to build a stable annual income from the fields.

Jiménez said labor organizing in rural Spain has also weakened, which has made it harder to push for better wages and conditions. He said unions still encounter workers in agriculture who are not properly registered, including people without formal contracts who accept whatever pay is offered because of their vulnerability. He said those cases are not limited to migrants.

That point has fed a broader union argument that Spain needs stronger collective bargaining in agriculture if it wants to keep workers from leaving each year for better conditions abroad. CCOO has urged farm employers in Andalusia and other regions to take the French harvest as a reference for wages, transportation, accommodation and basic labor protections. The union says improvements in those areas would reduce the need for workers to seek better terms outside Spain.

At the same time, unions see a possible labor pool in Spain’s recent migrant regularization efforts. According to figures from the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration cited by union officials, agriculture accounts for 8.3% of the 262,475 new affiliates added through that process. CCOO said many newly regularized workers are likely to go where jobs are available, and farming remains one of the sectors with demand, especially in rural areas that have lost population.

The French campaign also depends on experienced labor. Union officials said about 90% of the Spaniards hired for the harvest have worked it before. Many travel every year on shared buses, return to the same farms and are valued by French employers for their experience and speed in the vineyards. That continuity has helped preserve the route from southern Spain to French wine regions even as the number of departures has slowly declined.

In Seville, where CCOO presented its annual information campaign for workers heading to France, the union described the harvest as an important source of income for many families in Andalusia. José Hurtado, general secretary of CCOO’s Industry Federation in the region, called it the biggest labor migration flow currently leaving Spain. He said the work helps many laborers complete the number of days needed to qualify for Spain’s farm subsidy system and eases the lack of opportunities in many rural districts.

Both unions said they are also trying to prevent abuses before workers leave. They warned that false job offers are circulating on social media and said access to harvest work should be free. Workers were advised not to pay money to intermediaries and to verify contract terms before traveling. CCOO has distributed a sociolabor guide for the 2026 harvest, along with basic information on safety, hygiene and risk prevention for workers who will spend the next few weeks in French vineyards.