A 400-volt blast tore through an electrical tester’s face at a Google data centre site in Belgium, leaving him blinded and burning. No company has faced sanctions.
The March incident at Saint Ghislain unfolded during Sandu Dumitrescu’s final minutes of a nearly 10-hour shift. The 34-year-old Romanian, employed week to week through subcontractors, said refusing a last-minute task would risk his job. Managers confirmed the lines were dead. They weren’t.
Twelve thousand amps struck Dumitrescu as he connected cables during a routine second test. Doctors placed him in a five-day induced coma. Hospital records show second-degree burns across his face and neck, third-degree burns on his shoulder and fingers. A witness described managers fleeing while Dumitrescu screamed, tangled in his harness.
Belgium’s labour inspectorate closed its probe in October, finding no violations. Dumitrescu said authorities never interviewed him directly.
His experience sits at the heart of a five-month cross-border investigation into conditions on data centre construction sites across Sweden, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands. Reporters interviewed dozens of migrant workers at projects for Microsoft, Google and Amazon, gathering medical records, payslips, and videos.
The findings detail a pattern of injuries, unpaid overtime, rat-infested housing, and an unreported tuberculosis outbreak. At a Microsoft site near Gävle, Sweden, workers described “mental terror” under a football-style card system. Those who received yellow cards faced interrogation sessions and forced written confessions, then underwent English-only retraining despite speaking Romanian.
Pay slips reveal up to 60-hour weeks without overtime compensation. One union claims workers earned up to 30 percent less than Swedish counterparts. A tuberculosis case in February triggered no mandatory contact tracing, according to workers. Days later, vans relocated roughly 40 men to a Danish Microsoft site. Some had tested positive for latent TB, witnesses said.
Union access remains a persistent barrier. A Danish union consultant compared certain sites to “a state prison.” In the Netherlands, a Winthrop employee reportedly told FNV representatives: “Beyond this gate, it’s not the Netherlands.”
The European Commission will soon propose the Quality Jobs Act, targeting subcontracting chain liability. Meanwhile, a historic 15 million krona settlement between a union and contractor Benbau now grants Swedish unions site access and backpay for 78 migrant workers.
Dumitrescu remains confined to his Romanian home, covering medical costs and his son’s schooling. Doctors estimate he may recover only 70 percent use of his right arm.
