Vietnam: 330 illegal strikes recorded in six months

catch "unpractical[sic] and blinkered"
Posts: 9937 Joined: 07-02-06 Location: London
Submitted by catch on 19 June, 2008 - 11:43.

There's been a steady stream of news about strikes from Vietnam (which I get from a couple of RSS feeds and stick in news - nothing much in depth sadly) - it's getting quite obvious that in Hanoi and elsewhere, there's factories of 400-2000 workers on strike for a week at a time every week or so at least. Mainly around wages, sometimes articles mention working conditions, bad treatment by managers as well.

Just saw this article which says there's been 330 illegal strikes in 6 months, which is quite a bit higher than I'd guessed: http://english.vietnamnet.vn/social/2008/06/789199/

Vietnam has increasingly been somewhere companies relocate to rather than China - it's got tax free industrial zones, government run unions etc. so it looks like a similar situation is brewing to the ongoing 'disturbances' in China due to expansion, not dissimilar to the strikes that have followed the car industry around the world.

I know almost nothing about Vietnam though - especially nothing about any 'left' groups, and not much about the current political situation and economy - anyone else?

Quote:
A total of 330 strikes have been recorded so far this year and all of them were illegal because they were not led by the trade union and didn’t follow the law, reported the Vietnam National Confederation of Labour at a conference in Hanoi on June 16-17.

The confederation’s Vice Chairman, Mai Duc Chinh, said that under the current regulations, only grassroots trade unions have the right to organise strikes, but this regulation is unrealistic because there is no mechanism to protect trade union leaders and most employers don’t positively cooperate with trade unions.

Most leaders of grassroots trade unions assume many jobs so they don’t have much time for this job. Their skills as trade union leaders are also very poor, Chinh said.

He also said that the rules on compensating companies for losses caused by illegal strikes are unfeasible. For example, a company in HCM City lodged a case with the court but its petition was rejected because it was unable to define the major subject of the lawsuit among 10,000 workers participating in the strike.

Since the amended Labour Code took effect on July 1, 2007, illegal strikes have continued to increase in number.

Under the current law, labourers are not allowed to go on strike in conflicts of rights but must bring the conflict to court. They can go on strike if conflicts of interest are not solved by negotiations. Labourers must compensate their employers if the court finds that their strikes were illegal.

catch "unpractical[sic] and blinkered"
Posts: 9937 Joined: 07-02-06 Location: London
20 June, 2008 - 14:01

Like this - 3,500 workers out in Hanoi textile factory:

http://www.thanhniennews.com/society/?catid=3&newsid=39491

Quote:
Nearly 3,500 workers at two Ho Chi Minh City garment companies, both backed by the same Hong Kong investor, continued their strike on Wednesday even though their employers agreed to a “temporary” salary increase.

Workers at Kollan Company and Hugo Company, in Thu Duc District’s Linh Trung Export Processing Zone, refused to return to work because the extra VND100,000 (US$6) had been promised only on a temporary basis.

Lurch
Posts: 101 Joined: 15-10-05
21 June, 2008 - 18:52

This, from January, gives a little additional background and quotes from workers.
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31797

European and other firms with factories in China have indeed been complaining of a lack of skilled labour, the cost of training, and the 'unreasonable' wages paid and threaten to relocate to Indonesia or Vietnam, both as a means to keep Chinese wages in check and as an excuse for stepping up productivity 'or we'll relocate'. Others have evidently bypassed China and moved straight to Vietnam.

"The advantage of [China] being the lowest cost-per-hour is disappearing. The low-cost situation is moving in favour of Vietnam and Indonesia,' (Dutch chemicals factory boss quoted in The Times, June 23, 2007, 'China Boom Under Threat by Loss of Cheap Labour'.

Another, perhaps peripheral element, in the situation is the state of the stock market. Falls in Asia have been most marked in Vietnam - 53% according to a New York Times article reproduced in The Observer ('Stock Bubbles Across Asia Are Bursting', April 13, 2008).

While not mentioning Vietnam specifically, the article talks of many 'small investors' including 'maids and water melon hawkers' who borrowed heavily from banks to become day traders or investors, apparently in the belief that the region's leader, China, would not permit giant stock market crashes until after the Olympics. Apparently many - not all of them big or petit bourgeois types - are now well out of pocket.

David in Atlanta ""crude reductionist version of marxism""
Posts: 1729 Joined: 21-04-06
21 June, 2008 - 19:00
Quote:
VietNamNet Bridge - Workers and groups engaged in what are judged by courts as illegal strikes must now compensate employers.

Foreign investors are worried about the strikes’ impacts on production flows

Circular 07/2008/TTLT released by the ministries of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) and Finance guides the implementation of government Decree 11/2008/ND-CP, which regulates this compensation.
The circular states that executive boards of trade unions must take responsibility for compensation if they are the instigators of an illegal strike

http://english.vietnamnet.vn/biz/2008/06/789642/

Quote:
VietNamNet Bridge – “Though Japanese companies aren’t violating Vietnamese laws, we have to say that current salaries are too low. Hanoi calls for employers to increase their workers’ incomes,” said a senior official in a meeting with CEOs of 65 Japanese companies in the North Thang Long Industrial Zone on June 11.

http://english.vietnamnet.vn/social/2008/06/788349/

catch "unpractical[sic] and blinkered"
Posts: 9937 Joined: 07-02-06 Location: London
23 June, 2008 - 05:58
Quote:
Impotent labor unions don’t help workers: officials

Weak labor unions have failed to gain the trust of Vietnamese workers, who prefer to stage illegal walkouts rather than negotiate labor disputes through the unions, officials and union representatives said at a meeting.

As companies’ union officials are on company payroll, most of them would rather not risk losing their salaries to lead strikes, said participants at the meeting in Ho Chi Minh City Friday.

The meeting was held to discuss possible solutions to the growing number of walkouts in Vietnam.

Skyrocketing inflation, which hit 25 percent year-on-year last month, has outpaced wage increases and fueled strikes.

Workers have also staged walkouts against work overloads, poor benefits and harsh disciplinary actions.

Factories were hit by about 300 labor strikes in the first four months of 2008, the Vietnam General Labor Union (GLU) reported.

But none of the more than 2,300 strikes in Vietnam since 1995 have been led by company-level labor unions, which means they have all been illegal according to the Vietnamese Labor Law, said the GLU.

Nguyen Van Be, Party Secretary of the Tan Thuan Export – Processing Zone, said many labor officials were paper tigers who did not help workers organize legal strikes or protect their rights.

Dang Nhu Loi, vice director of the parliament’s Committee on Social Affairs, said a recent survey in the southern industrial hubs of Binh Duong, Dong Nai and HCMC showed that all labor union officials had been selected by local company leaders, not the workers.

“Without money or authority, how can labor unions protect workers?” Be said.

Truong Thi Mai, Director of the Committee on Social Affairs, speculated that maybe the “unions have been on the business owners’ side, not the workers’.”

Mai asked whether or not union staff would dare to lead workers on a strike if the conditions were ripe, to which Truong Lam Danh, vice president of the Ho Chi Minh City Labor Union, replied, “honestly, it’s unthinkable.”

Many local administrations have chosen to deal with strikes without dealing with the unions, whom they see as having no autonomous authority anyway.

HCMC authorities, for example, have planned to appoint city officials as labor union leaders in 40 major enterprises with over 1,000 staff each.

Mai said such “temporary measures” could be used now but should be kept at a minimum in the long-term.

“The best solution is negotiations [between workers and employers] through the unions,” she said.

She said that labor unions would also have to change the way they operate in order to help solve the country’s labor problems.

http://www.thanhniennews.com/society/?catid=3&newsid=39540

catch "unpractical[sic] and blinkered"
Posts: 9937 Joined: 07-02-06 Location: London
4 July, 2008 - 13:29

6,000 workers on strike at Chutex http://www.chutex.com/site.html (textiles).