Migrant workers building and maintaining datacentres in Sweden, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands face serious safety risks and exploitation, according to a five-month investigation by The Guardian and Investigate Europe.
The report describes an electrical tester who suffered burns to 12 per cent of his body in an arc flash in March at a Google datacentre site in the Belgian town of Saint-Ghislain, after lines he was told were dead turned out to be live. He said refusing late jobs could get workers fired. The local labour inspectorate closed its inquiry in October without finding wrongdoing, and Dornan Engineering, which oversaw his contractor, said it was committed to safe working conditions.
Europe has more than 2,300 datacentres, at least 500 of them in the UK, with hundreds more being built, and unions say the boom is putting workers at risk.
Source: The Guardian Technology
