Why always wildcat strikes in Vietnam?

Pham Thi Thu Lan

Since the reform from a command economy to a market economy in the early 1990s, labour relations in Vietnam have also changed, with more widespread disputes and strikes. Since 1995, when the Labour Code of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam first took effect, there were more than 6000 strikes[1], but what is remarkable is none of these were legal (The Labour Newspaper, 2017). A legal strike has to fulfill two criteria,: firstly, it can only take place after a procedure stipulated by the law which rules out rights-based strikes; and secondly, it has to be led by a trade union. However, all strike incidents in Vietnam appear to be sponteneous and unorganised, and thus are illegal and refered to as wildcat strikes.

Legal constraints on the right to strike
The procedure in Article 209 of the Labour Code of Vietnam provides for ‘interest-based’ strikes, that is strikes about labour disputes on matters not regulated by the law or in an existing collective bargaining agreement. Rights-based strikes are considered illegal and any dispute over rights is subject to settlement at court, which is often costly and time consuming. Court rules are unenforcable in a number of cases. Futhermore, the law concerning the right to strike provides for difficult and lengthly formal procedures (Articles 212 and 213 of the Labour Code). A collective labour dispute must first go through compulsory mediation and arbitration, where it is also decided whether the dispute is right-based or interest-based. These mechanisms often give trade unions and workers a hard time before any possiblity of going on strike. On top of that unions must fulfil heavily bureacratic requirements such as getting signatures of at least 50% of workers, specifying in writing the time, venue, scope and demands of the strike, providing names and addresses of contact persons from the trade union committee, and sending a copy of the strike decision to employers, the upper-level trade union and the state labour management agency in advance. It might take three weeks from the declaration of a labour dispute until a legal strike can take place.

The Insufficient protection of Vietnamese domestic workers in Saudi Arabia

Ly Trinh Khanh

Recently the Vietnamese media has reported many cases of Vietnamese female domestic workers being maltreated in Saudi Arabia. They were required to work between 16 and 20 hours without breaks in a day. Ms. Ha Thi Thu Trang, a 36 years old domestic worker from Thai Nguyen province, reported that some of her friends were either provided insufficient food by the employers or had to eat the food left over from the tables of the employers’ families. Other female domestic workers were sexually abused, such as Ms. Oanh from Nghe An and Ms. K. from Ho Chi Minh City. The domestic workers reported that they were treated like slaves, being forced to work until exhausted (Dai, 2015). 

However the labour sending companies require workers who want to terminate the employment contract before the expiry date to pay a compensation of approximately VN$60 million (around US$2770) (Dai, 2015). It is reported that 30 Vietnamese domestic workers who were rescued from their employers’ maltreatment are residing in the labour camps in Saudi Arabia to wait to return home. Some of them have been waiting for more than one year without the intervention of the Vietnamese authority bodies (PVH, 2016).

Coordination among strikes and prospects for pattern bargaining in Vietnam

Chi Do Quynh

The 1995 Labour Code granted Vietnamese workers the right to strike. However, none of the more than 5 000 strikes since then followed legal procedures, nor was organised by the official union, the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL). While the VGCL called these wildcat strikes ‘purely spontaneous’ (Chi and Van den Broek 2013), many studies proved they were organised by rank-and-file workers with the covert support of the Vietnamese mid-managers in foreign-owned enterprises, and sometimes even the official union leaders in the enterprises (Clarke and Pringle 2007, Anner and Xiu 2015). Based on a longitudinal study of strikes from 2005 to 2015 in seven provinces of Vietnam, including Ho Chi Minh City, Dong Nai, Binh Duong, Long An, Hanoi, Bac Ninh and Hai Phong, this paper finds that not only are strikes well organised, but there is also coordination among strikes. Strike waves result from the characteristics of industrial clusters, coordination among foreign employers, and worker communities inside industrial zones, which together create the basis of informal pattern bargaining.[1]

Organisation of strikes

Most strikes happened without advance notice or any attempt by the de facto leaders to negotiate with the employers. A smaller number of strikes, however, happened after several attempts to bargain informally. These strikes were often organised as follows: a group of rank-and-file workers petitions the employers, either directly or via the official union leader. The petition states the workers’ hardships and presents demands. It gives a deadline for the employer’s response, and fixes a date for the strike if the employer fails to respond or refuses the workers’ demands. In these companies, the informal leadership is active not only during strikes but also after. According to Tran (2013), the de facto leaders are often team leaders or experienced workers who have built networks among rank-and-file workers in the workplace and in their community, often around common cultural identities such as gender, province of origin or workplace.

Trade Unions in Transition: Changing Industrial Relations in Vietnam

Erwin Schweisshelm

Introduction
Trade unions in Vietnam are closely tied to the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and have yet to find their role as autonomous representatives of the interests of workers. However, the ever growing influence of foreign investors and the increase in wild cat strikes put pressure on the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL), the only legally registered trade union in Vietnam. This pressure has an impact on both the ideological self-perception of the VGCL, as well as its organisational behaviour. It then faces a difficult political dilemma: if the situation remains unchanged and the VGCL does not deal with the challenges of changing labour relations, workers will nevertheless fight for better working conditions and render the official trade unions obsolete. Should the VGCL start to perform its role of a genuine representative of the interests of workers in Vietnam, it must do so independently of the party and state in Vietnam.

Trade Unions in Transition – from harmony to conflict
Under the political conditions of a Leninist one-party state, the trade unions are a “mass organisation” under the leadership of the CPV. According to Article 10 of the Constitution of Vietnam, the VGCL is the only trade union organisation in Vietnam and represents the whole working class in Vietnam, not limited to its members.