400 Volts and No Liability: Migrant Workers Power Europe's Datacentre Boom

By Daniel Okafor

A 400-volt arc flash burned 12% of an electrical tester's body at a Google datacentre site in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, in March — and no company has been found liable. The local labour inspectorate closed its investigation in late October and found no wrongdoing, according to a five-month investigation by Investigate Europe and the Guardian.

The victim, a 34-year-old Romanian worker identified as Sandu, had already worked almost 10 hours when managers assigned a last-minute cable test. He says refusing was not an option. "I had no choice. People have been fired after saying no."

What happened in the voltage room?

Sandu decided not to retrieve a protective suit locked in an equipment room. The round trip would have added 15 minutes. Managers confirmed the lines were de-energised. The first test went to plan. On the second test, the cables were live. The blast delivered 400 volts and 12,000 amps to his face and right side in milliseconds.

"I went completely blind," Sandu says. Doctors at the Grand Hôpital de Charleroi placed him in an induced coma for five days. Hospital records seen by the Guardian and Investigate Europe show second-degree burns to his face and neck, and third-degree burns across his right shoulder and fingers. He describes his body after surgery as a "white-hot blister … It was so much pain. The human heart cannot comprehend it."

A Google regional director, a representative of Dornan Engineering — the Irish company overseeing his contractor — and his recruiter visited him in hospital. Sandu says the Google director told him he was lucky to be alive. Dornan said it was "committed to maintaining safe working conditions, complying with applicable labour laws and continually learning to help prevent incidents like this from happening again".

How big is the boom?

Europe hosts more than 2,300 datacentres, at least 500 of them in the UK, with hundreds more under construction — the largest infrastructure surge the continent has seen in decades. Unions say the push for European tech sovereignty rests increasingly on migrant labour.

The investigation, covering Sweden, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands, found evidence of:

• Debilitating injuries and fatalities, including a UK contractor death last year and another fatality in 2024 at an electrical substation built for a Microsoft datacentre
• Serious accidents this year at projects in Italy, Sweden, Norway and Belgium
• Squalid living quarters, unpaid wages and exploitative employment practices, including at projects in Brazil

What did investigators find in Gävle, Sweden?

Outside Gävle, two hours north of Stockholm, Microsoft is spending €3bn on a 130-hectare AI datacentre expansion begun in June 2024. The Irish-owned construction firm BenBau is one of 148 firms working under Collen Construction at the site, including 28 direct subcontractors.

Workers for BenBau documented crowded housing: 24 people to a kitchen, 14 men to a single bathroom. They reported vermin infestations, broken ventilation and no heating during sub-zero Swedish winters. In February, a Romanian worker tested positive for active tuberculosis. Others in the shared housing developed similar symptoms. BenBau informed only a few close contacts, told workers testing was optional, then moved another worker into the infected man's bedroom after he left for hospital, according to workers.

Freedom of information requests show Sweden's national work authorities and its Public Health Agency recorded no reported outbreak.

More than 30 workers showed investigators hundreds of payslips. They appear to show some staff working 50 to 60 hours a week with no overtime pay and missed holiday pay. Days before publication, the union Solidariska Byggare, representing the 70 Romanian workers at Gävle, brokered a settlement with BenBau that it says secures back pay and union access to sites. BenBau said it "takes all concerns regarding the welfare, health and safety of our people extremely seriously" and has "stringent procedures for reporting, investigating and addressing workplace concerns".

What is the regulator's record?

Since 2021, Sweden's Work Environment Authority (AV) has opened 50 cases into working conditions at datacentre sites involving Microsoft and several Irish firms, according to a freedom of information request. This month, a contractor fell through a roof hatch during ventilation maintenance at Gävle.

In October 2021, a forklift allegedly ran over the foot of a Collen supervisor, who needed surgery. An incident report says the wrong machine was used, the driver held no certificate and the lift plan was incomplete — yet the plan had been signed off. AV saw no grounds to report the employer to prosecutors. Collen said every site must be "a safe, healthy and respectful place to work" with "zero tolerance" for conduct inconsistent with those principles, subject to mandatory policies, client requirements and applicable laws.

Who is accountable?

James McCabe of Unite the Union, which represents more than 1.2 million workers in Ireland and the UK, says the pattern follows Irish contractors across tech-giant sites: "Everywhere we've encountered Irish datacentre contractors at tech-giant datacentre sites we've learned of lack of normal and meaningful union access … as well as serious concerns of labour crimes and exploitation of workers."

Johan Danielsson, the European parliament rapporteur regulating subcontracting chains, puts the onus on the clients. "If people let these big American multinationals come here and import their anti-union business models, then it becomes a problem. Because behind the fence they are abusing workers, and they don't want anyone to know it."

Google said its supplier code of conduct requires compliance with local labour laws and safe working conditions, and that it maintains "active dialogue with union leaders and trade groups". Microsoft said it sets clear requirements on health, safety and freedom of association, backed by audits against its human rights and fair labour policies.

With hundreds of datacentres still under construction and 50 Swedish regulatory cases already open, the liability gap between hyperscaler policy papers and subcontracted worksites remains the industry's unresolved cost — one currently paid in burns, lost wages and, twice in two years, in lives.