In late August, Hong Hanh, 23, attended a conciliation hearing with her former employer at the Berlin Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IHK Berlin) to contest what she says was an unlawful dismissal.

The Ho Chi Minh City native had spent nine months in Germany, shocked by her meager take-home pay and constant work.

When exhaustion forced her to ask for sick leave, she said, her broker and the restaurant owner pressed her to sign a voluntary resignation that would strip her of unemployment benefits. She refused and was immediately handed a dismissal notice.

The restaurant owner did not attend the hearing, sending a lawyer who argued the dismissal was valid because Hanh had shown no interest in the job.

With no agreement reached, her industry’s trade union is providing legal support to take the case to the Labor Court, which is expected to hear it late this year.

“When I came to Germany for vocational training, I could not have imagined going through these difficulties,” Hanh said.

Germany is Europe’s largest economy and the world’s third largest, behind the U.S. and China, according to International Monetary Fund data.

Vocational training in Germany took off among Vietnamese around 2018-2019 as the country eased its rules, including through the Skilled Immigration Act, to address labor shortages.

The biggest draw is the dual “Ausbildung” model, under which trainees pay no tuition and receive a monthly training wage. Some Vietnamese brokers went on to market it as a route to a better life.

About 16,000 young Vietnamese are now in vocational training in Germany, according to the Federal Employment Agency. Germany’s Migration Report 2024 says Vietnamese made up 21% of foreign nationals who entered the country for vocational training.

Income shock

Hanh learned of the route from a friend while in her second year of university and dropped out to study German. In late 2025, after paying €7,000 (US$7,900) in broker fees, she arrived in Berlin.

She worked at a local restaurant while waiting for her course to formally begin, and realized the high income the broker had advertised blurred gross pay (Brutto) with take-home pay (Netto).

Her contract set gross pay at €1,068 a month, but she took home only €787, half of which went on rent. Although her payslip listed a “meal allowance,” she still paid €68 a month out of pocket to eat at work.

“I have to budget every cent of the little that is left,” she said.

To survive in a city as expensive as Berlin, many trainees in her position share rooms without a formal rental contract. With no name on a mailbox, they miss important letters from the authorities and insurers.

Short of money, some work off the books in restaurants for less than the minimum wage, with no contract and no days off. They know they are being exploited but put up with it because of living costs and debts back home.

Under German rules, recruitment fees are paid by the hiring employer. But a study published in August 2025 by the Berlin-based Minor institute found that 57% of Vietnamese trainees came to Germany through private brokers, paying fees of €6,000-15,000 ($6,750-16,900).

A 2024 study by Freie Universität Berlin and reports by public broadcaster ARD estimated the figure could reach €20,000-40,000 ($22,500-45,000).

Many families who spend tens of thousands of euros believe their children are securing a stable future in Europe.

At an elderly care provider in Altenburg, in the state of Thuringia, a scandal broke in early 2026. The provider had lost its training license in August 2025 but concealed the fact, making 27 Vietnamese nursing trainees work unpaid for four to eight months while living in containers.

In mid-January 2026, when the trainees went on strike to demand their rights, they were evicted from their accommodation in the snow.

“By the time they called for help, they had lost everything: housing, their training place, their jobs and their income,” Michael Tirp, director of VDP Personal Bildung Integration, which runs an emergency SOS hotline for Vietnamese workers in Germany, told Read. The organization immediately launched a fundraising drive to arrange temporary housing for the group.

Phuong Nga, 24, from the outskirts of Hanoi, was among them. Unpaid for half a year and left without a training place, she sheltered at a nail salon on money sent by her family.

Tirp said that within a month the organization had helped her sign a contract with a new employer and find her own apartment.

Hanh also described being exploited. German labor law requires a break of at least 30 minutes on shifts of six to nine hours, but she said the restaurant’s timekeeping system always showed her working eight hours with a break and erased all overtime records.

Worn out, she fell ill and was fired.

“The broker told me to just sign the resignation and they would find me another place. When I refused because my family was already financially drained, he threatened that he had other ways to collect money from me,” she said.

High broker fees and the exploitation of trainees have become a recurring subject in the German press. VDP’s hotline, which once received a case every few months, now handles one or two emergencies a day, and the network has intervened free of charge in hundreds of cases since the start of 2026.

In her 2024 study, Professor Birgitt Röttger-Rössler of Freie Universität Berlin described a vicious circle in which debt forces many Vietnamese trainees to take on extra work instead of focusing on German. Financial pressure, the language barrier and ignorance of the law leave them wholly dependent on brokers and employers.

A representative of a brokerage in Hanoi acknowledged charging tens of thousands of euros per vocational training application but, asked about oversight after departure, said: “We only control the domestic end in Vietnam. The other side is handled by the overseas end.”

Christopher Gnadt, who has spent 10 years placing international staff in German nursing homes, said his firm recruits directly and charges no broker fee, yet candidates still face heavy costs for language study, visas and initial living expenses. Administrative hurdles make applying alone very difficult, so workers usually go through intermediaries.

He said broker fees in Vietnam are so high that trainees arrive with a debtor’s mindset.

“Vietnamese trainees need to understand they are not second-class workers. They have the same legal rights as local workers to ask the authorities to step in when they are coerced,” Gnadt said.

The Minor study found that 78% of Vietnamese trainees hold a B1 German certificate but in practice are only at A1 level because they studied just to pass the test. Weak German leads to repeated mistakes on the job.

Tirp said success in vocational training requires at least B2 German that is genuinely learned and genuinely tested, and that former victims should share their bad experiences with one another.

Tran Anh Tuan, vice chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Vocational Education Association, proposed that regulators tighten control of intermediaries, publish fee schedules and set up a hotline to protect trainees. He urged parents and students to stop “paying with their eyes closed.”

“Vocational training abroad is not about going to make money. Young people must equip themselves with real skills, real language ability, real contracts and real competence. Only with all four are income and employment sustainable,” Tuan said.

While waiting for the Labor Court to take up her claim, Hanh’s priority is finding a way to stay in Germany before her visa expires. Her job search is hard going with B1 German and many employers wary of a new approval process.

She may have to borrow more to prove her finances because she has not found a company that will commit to a net pay of €959 a month, the immigration office’s threshold.

Looking back on the past nine months, Hanh said her lack of language skills and legal knowledge led her to forfeit her own lawful rights, at the cost of her family’s time and savings.

Each evening she still calls home to Vietnam to say she is fine, hiding every difficulty so her mother will not worry.