#100 Fusion Workers in Europe Suffer From ITER Management Issues
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By Steven B. Krivit
Jan. 28, 2022
Johannes Schwemmer, Director of Fusion for Energy
European workers on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) have complained through their unions that a culture of overwork, stress, and abusive management has led to illness among workers and an employee’s suicide, POLITICO.EU reported on Jan. 26.
The European contribution to the ITER fusion reactor project is managed by the ITER domestic agency known as Fusion for Energy. The agency operates under the leadership of Director Johannes Schwemmer.
The European Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee held a preliminary hearing on the issues on Jan. 25 (link to video), and according to an administrator for the Parliament, the matter has been placed on the agenda for another meeting of the committee.
POLITICO.EU reported about the suicide:
The most fraught issue is the May 2021 suicide of plasma unit engineer Mario Gagliardi, who blamed stress at work for his decision to take his own life in a final note shared with POLITICO with his family’s permission.
“My final gesture is due to a breakdown at work, into which I have invested a lot … On a whirlwind of events I found myself to be the scapegoat of an unsustainable situation for years, despite my efforts and commitment to try and straighten things out from the bottom as much as possible, albeit unsuccessfully,” he wrote.
Chiara Merola, Gagliardi’s then-fiancée who also works at F4E, declined an interview but authorized POLITICO to share excerpts of her protest letter to management.
“I testified that his managers and HR were absolutely informed about his huge workload, about the episodes of harassment and bullying, about the attacks, about the risk of burnout, about the extremely stressful situation in which he was continually blamed for something that was not even his fault or responsibility and how all that was affecting his health,” Merola wrote.
On Jan. 17, 2022, the heads of the three labor unions representing the European ITER workers sent a letter to the European Commission about the critical situation in the Fusion for Energy agency. New Energy Times has obtained a copy of this letter. Among their greatest concerns was that the European Commission launched a preliminary assessment of the events that led to the death of Gagliardi — in collaboration with Fusion for Energy. The unions demand an independent investigation.
Schwemmer has a history of making false and exaggerated claims about the purpose and design objective of the ITER project. In September 2020, Schwemmer and his organization removed such false claims only after being forced by European Commissioner Kadri Simson, at my request, to do so.
