Germany is desperate to attract skilled nurses from other countries. Yet when a group of young Vietnamese trainees were recruited to help fill the gap, they went unpaid for months, were evicted from their homes and left fearful of deportation.
The state of Thuringia has provided a case study in how not to encourage labour migration in a country crying out for skilled workers. Over the past year, Vietnamese nursing trainees – or Azubis – were recruited to Germany, put to work caring for elderly patients and then quietly abandoned.
Their salaries were stopped, their rent went unpaid and training contracts were ultimately terminated. For months, nobody intervened on their behalf.
This is not a marginal story but one which sits at the heart of three German realities: the Ausbildung system as it applies to foreigners, the country’s acute nursing shortage, and the history of Vietnamese labour migration to the eastern states.
What happened in Altenburg, Thuringia
A group of trainees from Vietnam had been hired by Pflegedienst Steffi Hose GmbH, a care provider based in Altenburg and run by nursing entrepreneur Michael Hose.
They came to Germany through an employment agency, signing Ausbildung contracts that tied both their income and their legal right to stay in the country directly to their employer.
According to reporting by the Leipziger Volkszeitung, their problems began in early 2025. Bank statements showed that at least one trainee last received his salary in February 2025. Despite this, he continued working until the end of the year.
Payslips were issued, but the money never arrived. Other trainees reported working unpaid for three to eight months, with more than 20 confirmed cases backed by contracts and financial records.
On August 27th last year, the Federal Association of Private Social Service Providers (BPA) in Thuringia revoked the company’s training authorisation, citing – among other things – the failure to pay trainee salaries despite repeated requests.
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Yet it seems to have taken months for anyone to understand the consequences of that decision. Some trainees were dismissed in October 2025 because their contracts were no longer valid. According to MDR, others continued working , worried what the consequences to them might be if they stopped, until January this year when they finally contacted the authorities.
In the meantime, the trainees’ situation had deteriorated. Rent deducted from wages had not been passed on to landlords, leading to arrears and police‑enforced evictions. Four trainees were placed in emergency accommodation.
Some reported having “nothing or hardly anything to eat”, despite payslips showing deductions for food and utilities.
Only in February 2026 did the immediate crisis end. MDR reported that all the affected trainees have now been placed with new employers, none faced deportation, and those still in Altenburg were allowed to remain in their accommodation.
Why are foreign Azubis so vulnerable?
To understand why this situation became so severe, it helps to understand what an Azubi is: not a student, but a worker in training.
Azubis split their time between practical work and vocational school and earn a modest monthly training allowance – typically around €1,000 to €1,200 before tax.
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For non‑EU nationals, the training contract is everything. Lose it, and you may lose your right to stay in Germany. This dependency makes foreign trainees particularly vulnerable to potential abuse.
In Altenburg, some trainees were reportedly warned on social media not to contact authorities lest they be deported.
Commenting on the case, the trade union Verdi called the treatment of the affected trainees “inhumane, illegal and exploitative”.
Germany’s nursing shortage
Healthcare is one sector Germany cannot afford to mishandle. Germany could be short of up to 350,000 nurses by 2034, according to forecasts based on Federal Statistics Office data. Even under optimistic assumptions, tens of thousands of posts are expected to remain unfilled.
Experts have warned for years that profit‑driven hospital financing and cost‑cutting have hollowed out the profession.
READ ALSO: Which job sectors in Germany need the most skilled workers?
In the present case, blame is being passed back and forth between the care service operator, Michael Hose, and the State Administration Office.
On Facebook, the former claimed the Vietnamese trainees had not been paid because state subsidies had not been forthcoming. The latter said that subsidies for training non‑EU nurses were no longer available because the company’s practical training licence had already been revoked in 2025.
Wherever fault lies, the outcome in this case was clear: A system in desperate need of new workers had failed the very people it brought in.
A familiar pattern
Vietnamese workers are not new to eastern Germany.
From 1980 onwards, tens of thousands came to the GDR as contract workers under tightly controlled conditions. They were housed in dormitories and valued primarily as labour – also as a source of hard currency for the Vietnamese state.
Many of these workers experienced years of legal insecurity after reunification.
Workers were often given only temporary permits and deportations were common. Many who managed to stay in the country were made to work odd hours or multiple jobs.
Against that backdrop, the Altenburg case feels uncomfortably familiar. Young Vietnamese workers were again recruited to fill labour shortages, again made dependent, and again left exposed when systems failed.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: thelocal.de
