Hiring Thai welders in Poland: the 2026 employer guide

Why Poland

Poland takes in more non-EU workers than any other member state: on the Eurostat count of first residence permits issued for employment it has led the EU for about a decade. In 2025 the Ministry of Family and Social Policy issued a record 251,525 work permits to third-country nationals, 29 percent up on 2024, and that figure counts work permits alone, not the separate and larger channel of declarations of entrusting work. The stock is bigger still: Statistics Poland counted 1,141,100 foreigners working in the country on 31 December 2025. Manufacturing and metalworking are consistently among the most undersupplied sectors, with welders on virtually every regional shortage list.

The legal environment moved in employers' favour on 1 June 2025, when the act of 20 March 2025 on the conditions for entrusting work to foreigners came into force and abolished the labour-market test. One qualification worth knowing: the blanket test is gone, but a starost may designate specific local occupations as protected, so the position still has to be checked against that list rather than assumed clear. Filing is now electronic and only electronic, through a praca.gov.pl account, on the strength of your signed contract; paper applications are no longer accepted. Temporary-agency employment of foreigners remains legal through licensed agencies, but the same act bans disguised labour outsourcing through intermediaries that are not licensed temporary-work agencies, so who formally employs the worker has to be right on paper.

Certification before departure

Thailand is an established exporter of industrial welders: under a 2024 agreement with South Korea it undertook to send around 3,000 welders and mechanical technicians to the five largest Korean shipyards, which is the scale of the trade pool this draws on. Every welder we place is trade-tested in Thailand against ISO 9606 for your specific processes (MIG/MAG 135/136, TIG 141, MMA 111) before the contract is signed. You receive test results, certificates and video assessments, and can join the final interviews by video call - no one boards a plane until your team has approved the shortlist.

Permits and visas step by step

The process runs on two tracks at once. In Poland, we prepare and file the type A work permit application with the voivodeship office. In Thailand, the approved job order goes through the Department of Employment: the demand letter and power of attorney are legalised through the Royal Thai Embassy, the DOE approves the recruitment, and selected workers apply for the national D visa in Bangkok. Workers complete the mandatory DOE pre-departure programme - orientation, labour-law briefing and the Overseas Job-Seekers Fund - so arrival paperwork is clean on both ends.

Costs

Under the employer-pays principle, the full recruitment cost sits with you, never with the worker: our placement fee, DOE processing, medical checks, trade testing, visas and flights. Budget roughly one to two monthly gross salaries per worker all-in, depending on volume and certification requirements - we quote a fixed per-worker price before you commit. Polish law requires a written contract concluded before work begins, and the 2025 act set penalties for illegal employment at 3,000 to 50,000 PLN, counted per illegally employed foreigner rather than per inspection, with a higher floor of 6,000 PLN where the breach is intentional or where the employer charged the worker for the permit. That last point is worth reading twice: charging the worker is itself a named offence, which is why our side of the cost sheet is fixed at zero.