Lost in Germany

Spanish Jobseekers Lured on False Pretenses

Diego Lopez, 21, was promised a job contract and shared apartment, but they have not materialized.

By Der Spiegel

They were promised new jobs in Germany — but their hopes have now been quashed. Nearly 130 would-be Spanish workers are stranded in Erfurt after private employment agencies apparently failed to follow through.

When night falls in Erfurt, Diego Lopez has to go into the "hole." That's what the 21-year-old Spaniard calls the cellar of an old school where he and 20 of his countrymen have been sleeping in recent weeks. Bunk beds are crammed next to each other in two small rooms, which smell like sweat and dirty socks, Lopez says. The ventilation system doesn't work properly, and they all have to share a single shower, he adds.

But unlike their last accommodations, at least the heat works and they don't have to sleep on the floor. Furthermore, Lopez can still afford to stay here. A night in the "hole" costs €3.50 ($4.74).

A trained geriatric nurse, he is one of 128 Spaniards who have been stranded in Erfurt after being promised jobs that didn't come through. Full of hope, they struck out for Germany two weeks ago to take part in a program that the Federal Employment Agency calls "The job of my life." The new initiative promises young people from ailing southern European countries either dual vocational training or employment as a skilled worker, along with language courses and lodging — all subsidized by the German state. And it was this program that two private job placement agencies used to lure the Spaniards to the eastern German state of Thuringia.

Their dream jobs never materialized, though. "They deceived us shamelessly," Lopez says. He's talking about Kerstin S. and Sven K., the heads of the agencies X-Job and Sphinx Consulting. "Sven told me that I would earn €818 per month and live in a four-bedroom shared apartment," he says.

Instead of a work contract at an Altenburg care facility and a flat share, however, he was placed in a grim building with no running water. The companies put other fellow jobseekers in unheated barracks in an industrial part of town. Some program participants report having to spend the night in cars. Meanwhile, they haven't seen a cent of the funding they were promised.

But far worse for the Spanish jobseekers was finding out that there weren't jobs waiting for them after all. Hardly any of them received the job contracts they were promised, and often the companies had been given hardly any information about the newcomers at all. The applicants, companies and politicians all agree: Both placement agencies failed.

"Fundamental due diligence was obviously violated," says Matthias Machning, Thuringia's economy minister. Machning, of the center-left Social Democratic Party, is alarmed: Spanish journalists are coming to Erfurt by the dozen to report on their fellow countrymen. "Germany is not paradise," the radio station Cardena Ser called one of its segments. On Wednesday, Machning convened an initial crisis summit with representatives of the region's business community and the Spanish Embassy. "This is about the image of Thuringia and of Germany," said the politician.

"These agents overreached hopelessly," says Dirk Ellinger, head of the German Hotel and Restaurant Association (Dehoga) in Thuringia. "They didn't even manage to produce accurate name lists of the program participants." Kerstin S. set out to place 70 Spanish trainees with restaurants, hotels and large-scale culinary companies. For a nominal premium of €250 the agent pledged a comprehensive, worry-free package: from the pre-selection of qualified candidates, to the organization of German classes, to accommodation in Thuringia.

But Kirsten S. repeatedly botched appointments with the businesses, missed deadlines and made false claims, says Ellinger. "And then when the first Spanish person arrived, she sent me an email asking how quickly I could draw up an internship contract" — ostensibly to enable her to apply for the government subsidies of several hundred euros per month held out as a prospect to the "Job of my life" participants....