Violence and Exploitation Among Romanian Workers in the Netherlands

Iulian Terchilă after the incident. Photo taken by himself, while waiting in Eindhoven station.

“I woke up in the dark, while I was being yelled at and hit from all sides. When the lights came on, I saw my hand, red and swollen, and Spătaru’s men, all holding baseball bats,” Iulian Terchilă recounts, lying on the platform of the train station in Eindhoven, next to his few belongings.

On September 7, he was assaulted by his recruitment agency’s coordinator and five others, an incident that sparked outrage among labor advocates who argue that it is part of a broader pattern of abuse.

There are more than 40,000 Romanians working in the Netherlands, forming a vital yet often invisible backbone of the economy. Despite their essential contributions in sectors like logistics, agriculture, and the meat industry, many face increasing exploitation by recruitment agencies, with reports of mistreatment becoming alarmingly frequent.

Iulian Terchilă, 34, is just one of these workers. A month and a half prior, he had been employed by SVK Personeelsdiensten, a Dutch agency based in Schijndel, to load and unload trucks, earning a gross wage of €13.68 per hour.

Soon after starting the job, however, he began experiencing debilitating pain due to perforated ulcers, for which he had already undergone surgery. "All I asked for was a few days off to recover," Terchilă told The Glass Room.

The quarrel he had that night with a housemate over a gram of marijuana seemed to provide just the right excuse. “Spătaru and I never got along well. He’s been waiting a long time to kick me out,” Terchilă says.

After the assault, Terchilă was forced into a Ford Focus, driven from Bocholt to Eindhoven, and abandoned there with severe injuries to his eyes and hand. He called an ambulance himself. Paramedics treated his injuries with ice and contacted the police, but Dutch authorities could not pursue the case, as Bocholt lies across the border in Belgian territory, outside their jurisdiction.

Contacted by telephone, Robert Spătaru, Terchilă’s superior, completely denied the allegations. "That night, I was called because Iulian was chasing everyone in the house with a knife, threatening to cut them to pieces. He hadn’t worked for three shifts in a row, always complaining about either a toothache or stomach pain, yet every night he was drunk. I didn’t hit him, but I had to hold him down,” Spătaru says. “He should be thanking me for not leaving him in the field. I did my best to take him to a station.”

In his well-lit office in Schijndel, Sjoerd van Kathoven, the owner of SVKPersoneelsdiensten, seems to side with the coordinator. "You have to understand, Spătaru isn't at fault here. He’s caught in the middle, and naturally, people are against him. Iulian was violent. Look, I have a video from that time."

He offers his phone, showing a clip of Iulian engaged in what appears to be a friendly, competitive tussle with a colleague. It is daytime in the video, while the incident in question occurred at night.

“There are, on average, three or four similarly severe cases each month,” claims Marian Raicu, the leader of the Romanian Trade Union in the Netherlands. “Many Dutch agencies fabricate or instigate scandals to evict workers without the legally required two week’s noticewhen they face health problems, a practice that seriously violates Dutch law,” he says. “Agencies often bypass regulations, leaving vulnerable workers exposed to intimidation and abuse. This is a significant challenge, particularly for migrant workers who often lack the knowledge or resources to assert their rights.”

After the incident, DPD distanced itself from responsibility by stating it does not have a direct contractual relationship with SVK Personeelsdiensten. “The worker in question, Iulian Terchilă, was employed by SVK under a contract with Tempo Team, a staffing agency with which DPD has an existing agreement,” they explained.

A pressing question remains: If Robert Spătaru is SVK’s employee and Terchilă was Tempo Team’s employee, was Spătaru justified in intervening to evict him?

"Iulian was not Tempo Team’s employee," Van Kathoven reassures me. "He signed the contract with us and got paid by us."

As each party shifts blame, Raicu calls for stricter oversight of recruitment agencies. “This issue extends beyond a single case of eviction. It reflects a systematic mistreatment of migrants brought here to perform hard labor, who are subjected to violence, forced to work beyond legal limits, and treated as disposable.”