The Challenge from Below: Wildcat Strikes and the Pressure for Union Reform in
Vietnam
By Quynh Chi Do[1]
Abstract
Despite radical revisions of labour legislation in the last two decades, the official trade union of
Vietnam (VGCL) had remained largely unreceptive to change until the recent explosion of wildcat
strikes. This paper examines the nature of recent wildcat strikes in Vietnam with a focus on how they
are organised, why they have become increasingly prevalent, how the patterns of strikes have
changed, and their impacts on the labour regime, in particular on the VGCL. The key finding of this
paper is that the wildcat strikes have grown both in terms of quantity and sophistication due to the
leading role of team leaders and skilled workers, the informal supportive network of workers in the
factories and the community, and particularly, the pro-labour responses of the state and civil society
to strikers. Though wildcat strikes have posed the biggest challenge for the VGCL to act more like a
member-representative union than a State organisation, its conflicting mandate and subordination to
the Communist Party remains a major obstacle to any serious union reform.
Introduction
The 1995 Labour Code marked the historic transition ‘from command to market’ of the
industrial relations system of Vietnam. With the passage of the legislation, strikes have
grown so steadily that they are taken for granted by the authorities as a feature of the market
economy rather than exceptional events. Yet, in the first ten years after 1995, while the
number of strikes averaged 100 per year, they had little impact beyond the affected
enterprises. The last four years, however, observed a shocking surge in labour conflicts
which have been organised in coordination across companies, creating waves of strikes that
boldly challenged the existing national institutions.[2]
Despite recent attempts to assert its independence of the government by publicly counterarguing the former’s policies,[3] the Vietnam General Confederation of Union (VGCL) – the
only official trade union organisation in Vietnam – still consistently operates under the
Communist Party’s leadership. At the central level, the Central Party Committee usually
makes the final approval stamp on major union policies and personnel appointments. At the
workplace, the functions of the trade unions have seen minimal changes from the past. The
role of enterprise unions, as promoted by the authorities, is to act as ‘the bridge of
communication’ or a mediating body between employers and workers rather than the
representative of workers’ interests in opposition to employers.[4] Unsurprisingly, none of
the strikes in the last 13 years was organised by the official unions. As the enterprise unions
are unable to go beyond their intermediary role towards representing workers in negotiating
with employers, ‘collective bargaining by riot’[5] has become the only method by which
workers defend their rights and interests.
Industrial conflicts are not new to East Asian economies. Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, the
Philippines and South Korea all faced massive labour protests in their early stage of
industrialization when the economies relied on low-cost, labour-intensive production.
However, despite a high level of militancy, East Asian workers have not been able to
influence the policy decisions directly related to them. As Deyo [6] bitterly found: “no where
– not in their workshops, firms, communities, or governments – have workers been able to
influence the political and economic decisions that shaped their lives”. The transformation of
1
industrial relations in East Asian countries is mostly attributed to changes in industrialization
strategies or specific national politics[7, 8] while the voice from workers below played an
insignificant role in the policy-level decisions.
Recent studies on industrial relations in Vietnam, particularly those in comparison with
China, have shown that Vietnamese labour has effected a much more significant impact on
the transformation of the national labour regime. It is possible to explain this divergence
from the tradition of other East Asian economies by the spontaneous solidarity and
organisational strength of Vietnamese rank-and-file workers and the pro-labour approach of
the State and the Party to strikers [3, 9, 10]. This paper will contribute to this emerging
literature by arguing that the increasing scale and sophistication of wildcat strikes and the
tolerant responses of the State and civil society to these informal industrial actions have had
more impact on the official trade union than any legislative or institutional factors.
Nonetheless, a fundamental union reform remains obstacled by the union’s conflicting
mandate and its subordination to the Party.
The study is based on the initial findings of a three-year project[11] on the transition of
labour movements in three post-socialist countries, Russia, China, and Vietnam. In Vietnam,
the project has conducted 10 case studies on various aspects of industrial relations such as
labour-management relations at the shop floor and enterprise level, the interactions among
unions at different levels, impacts of wildcat strikes on labour policies, the relationship
between the union, the State, and the Party, among others. The project’s research in Vietnam
was supported by around 50 in-depth interviews with key actors including the labour
authority, regional governments, employers’ associations, the mass media, the ILO and the
union carried out at different points in time from 2006 to 2008. The paper is also informed
by the author’s visits to 20 factories systematically conducted since 2004.
The Internal Structure of Wildcat Strikes
Wildcat strikes have become the central issue of Vietnamese industrial relations in the last
five years. According to the official statistics of the VGCL, there were over 1,900 strikes
reported from 1995 to 2007, and over 1000 strikes from January 2007- July 2008. As can be
seen in Figure 1, strikes abruptly exploded in early 2006 and peaked in 2007 with 541 strikes
involving over 350,000 workers.[12] As of August 2008, more than 400 strikes have been
tallied. Strikes occurred first and foremost in the foreign-invested enterprises in labourintensive manufacturing industries such as textile-garment, footwear, wood processing,
electronics, and seafood processing (Figure 2).
The manufacturing sector is playing the central role in the industrialisation process of
Vietnam, contributing an average of 20 percent of GDP and over 40 percent of export
volume. Yet, if taking labour turnover and strikes as indicators of industrial conflicts, the
manufacturing industries have faced the most serious problem. According to our informants
from about 20 companies in different manufacturing industries, including footwear, apparel,
or electronics, the average labour turnover ranges from 40 to 60 percent. 78 percent of strikes
in the first 8 months of 2008 occurred in manufacturing companies (VGCL strike statistics
update). In terms of location, over 80 percent of strikes have occurred in Ho Chi Minh city,
Binh Duong, and Dong Nai – the three most industrialized provinces in the South of Vietnam
(Figure 3). Yet, there are signs that strikes are spreading to the central (Da Nang) and
northern provinces (Hai Phong, Hai Duong, Ha Noi).
2
Figure 1: Trend of Strikes in Vietnam, 1995-2007
600
Strikes
500
400
300
200
100
19
95
19
96
19
97
19
98
19
99
20
00
20
01
20
02
20
03
20
04
20
05
20
06
20
07
0
Year
Figure 2: Percentage of strikes in Vietnam by Enterprise Ownership, 1995-2007
4.7%
26.1%
69.2%
SOE
FDI
Private Vietnamese
Figure 3: Percentage of strikes by Location, 1995-2007
17.4%
34.9%
21.7%
26%
Ho Chi Minh city
Binh Duong
Dong Nai
Others
However, though work stoppages are the most dramatic and disturbing form of industrial
conflict for the general public and the State, they are not the only expression of labourmanagement dispute. Other varieties of conflict with the employer may also take the form of
3
absenteeism, personnel turnover, grievance handling, or sabotage (Kerr 1964 p171).
Sometimes, workers express their dispute with the employer by one form of conflict rather
than others but in many cases, the disputes are conveyed through a combination of different
types of industrial conflicts. In other words, strikes are just part of a continuum of behavior
of workers in dispute with their employers. As Kornhauser et al. suggested:
A true understanding of industrial strife … demands consideration of related,
less-spectacular manifestations as well… The general object of study is not the
labour dispute, the strike or the lockout but the total range of behavior and
attitudes that express opposition and divergent orientations between industrial
owners and managers on the one hand and working people and their
organisations on the other (1954 pp. 12-13).
Therefore, rather than focusing on wildcat strikes only, it is necessary to place them in
relation with the behavior that leads to and that which results from them. Given the high
concentration of strikes in manufacturing industries, this section will focus on employment
relations at manufacturing factories and workers’ communities in an attempt to explain the
internal organisation of ‘unorganised’ labour conflicts in Vietnam.
Employment Relations in Manufacturing Factories
Almost all manufacturers, domestic and MNCs alike, apply a Fordist mode of production,
using low-skilled labour in assembly production. They normally recruit young graduates or
even drop-outs from high school migrating from the rural areas. These unskilled workers
would receive training for one to three months, mostly on-the-job training provided by more
experienced workers. Then, workers would be assigned to different assembly lines with
simple and monotonous work.
Workers are paid either by piece rate or on a time basis. As the employers set the basic wage
rate for both piecework and time base at an extremely low level (equal to or slightly higher
than the minimum wage), workers usually have to take on plenty of overtime work and cut
off their annual leave to ensure a living income. As seen in table 2, overtime payment and
allowances account for one third of the total income of a worker.
Table 2: Wage composition of a manufacturing worker in Hanoi
Basic salary
67.4%
Allowances (travel, attendance)
6.3%
Overtime payment
22%
4.3%
Performance Bonus
They also face with significant work intensification. For instance, workers who fail to keep
up with the working pace in garment assembly lines are criticized on the factory
loudspeaker, which leaves a lasting mental effect on workers and creates tension among line
members:
No one likes to hear their name on the loudspeakers. It became a scary thing for
us. I still woke up in the middle of the night, sweating when in dreams I heard
my name from the loudspeakers. We also had a lot of tensions among ourselves
because if a worker makes a mistake in the previous part, she will slow down
the workers in the later parts. Quarrels and fights happened all the time. A
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worker in the later part would slash at the worker in the previous section if the
latter makes a mistake. They even threw cloth at the other’s face
(Interview by the author with a garment worker in Hanoi, 28 May 2008)
Migrant workers find themselves under pressure to swiftly adjust to the industrial disciplines,
particularly in foreign companies. A worker in a footwear company in Ho Chi Minh City
complained that they had to remember 99 work rules and violation of these rules results in
either loss of bonus or dismissal.
Management’s common approach to labour relations is authoritarian. A union is often
avoided or, if set up, the management would ensure that only their most loyal employees
become union leaders. And there are deadly loopholes in the union election rules and
procedures that enable the management to manipulate the union election outcome. First, in
preparation for the appointment of a provisional union board, the higher-level unions (district
or EPZ unions) have to rely on the HR department to make a list of candidates. A union
official explained:
We have no idea about the people in the company, who can be union leaders;
therefore, we have to ask the HR manager to do it. Any way, it is only the
provisional union, not the official one.
(Interview by the author with an officer of Binh Duong EPZ union, 3 March 2006).
It is understandable, therefore, that only the candidates favoured by the management are
nominated for union posts. The first union election, in which workers are supposed to be able
to choose their union leaders, is organised six months after the establishment of the
provisional union. It is a common practice that the union would consult the management on
the candidature and it often happens that the list is revised if the former opposes certain
nominations. Then, the management (often the director or HR manager) is invited to attend
the union election and his/her appearance alone is sufficiently intimidating for workers who
want to nominate their favoured candidates beyond the approved list. Even worse, there is no
monitoring mechanism maintained by the higher-level union to ensure that the union
elections are organised in accordance with the rules set by the Union Constitution.
Sometimes, the higher-level union officials are invited to attend union elections but if they
can not make it, which is the more common case due to shortage of union personnel and
resources, a report on the election result is all they require. In the absence of a monitoring
mechanism, many enterprises even ignore the whole election procedures and a union is born
out of an informal agreement within the management.
The functions of enterprise unions include providing welfare benefits (allowances for
sickness, marriage, and maternity), if any, to workers and sealing the approval stamp on the
management’s decisions of discipline, dismissal, or overtime schedule. It is not an exception
for managers to become union leaders. The employers’ manipulation of union elections and
the union’s subordination to the management deprive trust of workers from their so-called
representatives. When asked why they did not refer their grievances to the enterprise union
before walking out, a worker burst into laughter:
Are you kidding? He [union chair] is a manager. If I open my mouth, the next
day I am gone. And you know who would sign my dismissal decision? The
union vice chair who is also the HR manager.
(Interview by the author with a worker, March 2006)
5
In privatised SOEs, the pressure to compete in cost with other private and foreign-owned
firms has made these companies shift from the traditional paternalistic HR policy typical of
SOEs in the command economy to the authoritarian model. The enterprise unions in these
companies, which often remain an integral part of the management, fail to establish their
connections with the new generation of workers nor represent them in negotiation with the
employers. A worker described her union leader as follows:
I never met her [the union chairwoman]. She was only in her office and never
came to our factory. I knew her name just because I saw her signature on the
union announcements posted on the notice board.
(Interview by the author with a garment worker, May 2008)
Surrogate trade unions: The role of team leaders
When the official unions fail to represent members’ interests, workers would pick up
informal leaders among themselves. As experience in other countries shows, in Fordist
factories, supervisory (team leaders) and/or experienced workers would naturally emerge as
workers’ leaders (Hyman 1975; Donovan Commission Report 1965; and Chan 2008). In
manufacturing factories, workers are grouped into teams of eight to twenty headed by team
leaders. Team leaders have enormous influence on workers. They make decisions on task
assignment within each team, deal with minor technical problems, control production quality
of the team and each worker, make performance evaluation of workers, handle workers’
grievances before transferring them on to the higher level management. For workers, the
team leader is even more influential than managers:
A team leader, for us, is more powerful than a manager because if a team leader
does not like a worker, she can assign her to a more difficult job or downgrade
the performance evaluation of that worker from A to B.
(Interview by the author with a worker at a Sumitomo Bakelite Vietnam, May 2008)
A company’s policy toward team leaders directly affects their relationship with team
members. When team leaders are treated as workers and their wages and benefits are not
differentiated from workers, they tend to stand on the workers’ side. In the East Asian MNCs
we visited, team leaders are promoted from workers. They receive similar wages to workers’,
except for the position allowances. These team leaders tend to be closer to workers and
actively act as the representatives of workers in relation to the management and the union.
An enterprise union leader told us:
When the company is going to revise wages, we have to go to each team,
explaining to team leaders…Once the team leader understands, we can be sure
that she will explain to the workers. If we can persuade the team leader to agree
with the new rate, workers in the team will follow.
(Interview by the author, May 2008)
A common policy among domestic companies toward team leaders (which has been adopted
by many foreign-invested companies as well) is completely different. Team leaders are
treated as managers with better job security and allowances. While workers are paid on
piecework, team leaders receive a fixed monthly salary. Apart from the fixed salary, team
leaders also receive a productivity bonus that makes up 30-40 percent of their income. The
6
productivity bonus is calculated on the basis of the team’s overall productivity. This policy
places team leaders’ interests in opposition to workers’: the harder workers work, the higher
bonus team leaders enjoy. In the former case, the team leader becomes a part of the team,
working in solidarity with workers; whereas in the latter, s/he separates from other team
members, supervising them from above. Expectedly, as our research points out, team leaders
in the first cases often become informal workers’ leaders while those in the second ones spy
on workers to report to the management.
Team leaders who are workers’ informal representatives often maintain a network with each
other to exchange information and enable them to coordinate collective actions. A union
leader observed:
I think two or three team leaders are organisers [of strikes]. They maintain
constant contact with one another and with key workers in all workshops. When
they need to discuss something, words can be passed on quickly during lunch,
breaks, or after work.
(Interview by the author with the union leader of Carimax Saigon, March 2006)
Evidence proves that this type of underground coordination has been extremely effective.
Following is what a female worker told us about how they were able to produce 1,200
written complaint letters on a wage increase in just one night:
That was when the company announced the new wage increase. The raise was
too small. If a worker gets D (the lowest level of performance evaluation), she
will receive only five thousand dong more. Working for one year and get just
five thousand dong. Everyone was angry. We saw messages written on the toilet
walls that we should write complaints to demand for higher wages; if they [the
management] do not agree, it says that we should go on strike. So we started
talking to our team leaders. The team leaders discussed among themselves then
they told us that we should write and file complaints in one night only to make
sure that the production is not affected. That night, my team leader gave us a
sample complaint and we all wrote our own complaints. But she did not write
complaint because she did not want to be affected. Then, she brought all
complaints to the HR department.
(Interview by the author with a female worker at Sumitomo Bakelite Vietnam,
June 2008)
Though the team leaders tried to avoid the management’s suspicion against them by not
joining workers in writing complaints, their vital role in organising and coordinating the
collective action is undeniable. It is extremely difficult for workers without team leaders’
support to wage collective actions because they not only lack effective leaders but also find
themselves vulnerable to being disclosed by their team leaders. However, the probability of
industrial actions will be higher when workers of these companies are encouraged by the
victory of strikes in neighbouring companies. In this situation, only leaflets calling for a
collective action or rumours from friends working in other factories that have benefited from
strikes would easily ignite a wildcat strike. As our research found out, the people behind the
contagious flame of wildcat strikes are often more skilled and experienced workers who are
well-informed about strikes in other companies and enjoy a better position in the labour
market. A female worker who fearlessly claimed that she produced the strike leaflets and
called the authorities to come for settlement said:
7
Worker: My sister is working at the Linh Trung industrial zone and she said that
they all went on strike there and got better wages. The management here is
harsh but I know how to deal with them. I copied leaflets and left them in the
toilets. Workers supported and we all walked out. When the strike broke out, I
called the labour department because we trust that they would help us sort these
things out.
Researcher: Were you not scared of being dismissed?
Worker: Other workers are scared, I am not. I have been working for 6 years so
I can find a job anywhere else. The company needs workers like me.
(Interview by the author with a worker at TRF, Ho Chi Minh city, March 2006)
Community of Migrant Workers
Before 2005, dormitories for workers were extremely limited. According to the VGCL
Center of Labour and Workers, the dormitories of industrial parks in the whole country could
accommodate merely 2 percent of migrant workers. After 2005, when workers started to
walk out more frequently, the lack of accommodation for migrant workers became a serious
concern for the union and the authorities. In the annual meeting between the Prime Minister
and VGCL in early 2007, the Prime Minister required the investment and planning authority
to provide investment incentives for enterprises to build dormitories for their workers. In
Hanoi, the city authority has just finished the first dormitory for workers in the Thang Long
Industrial park. However, living in the dormitories is not a prime choice for workers in the
industrial zones. First, though the rent is slightly cheaper than outside, workers are strictly
controlled in terms of time they can get in or out of the dormitories and they have to report to
the guards if they take friends to their rooms. Most workers, therefore, opt for
accommodation outside.
Migrant workers often concentrate in certain villages close to their factories. These villages
are called workers’ villages (làng công nhân). Normally two to three workers would live in a
room of 10-15m2 that costs 20-30 dollars/month. Each landlord maintains 10-20 such rooms
built on their yard, offering two bathrooms for all tenants. Cooking is done inside each room.
A worker may choose to share a room with workers in the same company or those who come
from the same province.
Living in such concentration, workers know exactly how much other companies in the same
industrial zone are paying. The workers’ village has facilitated the growth of an informal
network among migrant workers which would easily create a knock-on effect in case of a
strike. This explains why workers in the industrial zone were able to initiate waves of strikes
in the last few years. The white-collar workers and managers either live downtown or rent
houses in more affluent suburbs. Understandably, union leaders who are white-collar or
managerial staff do not share the same community with workers and detach themselves from
this crucial network of cross-company information and coordination.
Workers of companies located outside of industrial zones, however, do not live in such
concentration. Industrial zones are located in unpopulated areas in suburbs far away from the
city centers. They are surrounded by agricultural villages where peasants have land to build a
large number of rooms for rent. Companies outside the industrial zones are located in
different suburbs of the city where the shortage of rooms for rent does not allow workers to
live in a large community like the workers’ village. Therefore, though strikes may happen
8
here or there among these companies, it can hardly initiate a knock-on effect that turns into a
wave of strikes like those in the industrial zones.
Wildcat Strikes, Strike Waves, and Labour Turnover
Strikes are workers’ strategic reactions to the actions of other social actors[13]. In Vietnam,
wildcat strikes resemble a response of workers to the rights-based institutional forms of
regulation of industrial relations established in the early stages of reform, which have proved
slow to adapt to the new circumstances in which disputes are interest-based (Clarke et al.
2007). Prior to 2005, weak labour inspection and the high demand for attraction of foreign
investment of local authorities resulted in pervasive violations of labour rights including
avoidance of signing labour contracts, evasion of social insurance contributions, paying
workers under the legal minimum wage, excessive overtime work, among others. Strikes
before 2005 mostly occurred over these right-based causes. However, there has been a
transition in workers’ strikes from protection of legal rights to improvement of their working
conditions (ILO Discussion Paper, 2005). As a labour official of the union federation of Ho
Chi Minh city expressed it: “previously, workers went on strike for their legitimate rights but
now the situation has changed. They organised strikes to demand better meals, higher wages,
less overtime work, and better working conditions”.[14] This trend of transition in the
essence of strikers’ demands is shown vividly by the statistics: in 2004, the interest-based
demands were causes to 20 percent of all strikes; in 2007, this figure was quadrupled to 79
percent. Obviously, wildcat strikes are not only the spontaneous expression of workers’
discontent about the employers’ violations, they have become the most effective and the only
working mechanism for them to bargain for higher pay and better working conditions.
A typical scenario of a wildcat strike would start with the dissemination of strike calls. A few
days before the strike, the call for strike can be found on toilet walls, in leaflets scattered
around the company, or simply a spread of word. Workers would suddenly stop working and
gather outside the enterprise facility. Strike leaders do not show up. Informed by the
employer concerned, the district labour authority official, often accompanied by the district
union, rushes to the enterprise. They talk to workers on strike to gather workers’ grievances
and demands. The police often appear at the strike scene but take no suppressive action. The
labour and union officials (or the strike taskforce) would negotiate with the management on
the demands. Once the management accepts a part or all of the ‘legitimate’ demands of
workers presented by local labour official (on behalf of workers on strike), workers would go
back to work - often being paid for their time off during the strike - and the strike situation
would end. [15]
The traditional technique of negotiation of the strike taskforce was to find out the legal
violations of the management and use them as a weapon to force the management to accept
the interest demands of workers. This negotiation method received a lot of complaints from
both the employers and international organisations as it eliminates the motivation for
workers to negotiate with the management. Particularly, when strikes spread to Japanese
companies which comply strictly with the legislation, the traditional technique became futile.
Now, the labour officials would require the employers to immediately recorrect their
violations, if any, and leave the district union which represents workers to negotiate with the
management on interest demands without any visible intervention.[16] Consequently, the
new method of strike settlement has prolonged the length of strikes. From an average of
several hours to one day, a strike in 2008 lasted for three to five days. The longest strike that
occurred in Hue Phong company in Ho Chi Minh city took 25 days to be settled .
9
While a strike challenges the management and can be settled within an enterprise, a strike
wave is the symptom of malfunctioning institutions of industrial relations. The existing
industrial relations institutions in Vietnam create no working mechanism for workers to
negotiate with the management at the enterprise; particularly when the unions can hardly
perform their representation function.
The first wave of strikes exploded in December 2005 and lasted for a month with 150 strikes,
involving 140,000 workers. Workers on strike demanded the adjustment of the minimum
wage that had not been revised since 1999. The low minimum wage had acted as a legitimate
excuse for employers not to raise wages. The strike wave shocked the State and the outcome
was a governmental decree that raised the MW by 40 percent.[3] The victory of the first
strike wave asserted the possibility of workers to influence national labour policy. After the
first wave of strikes, three more waves happened, often before or after Tet when companies
ran into serious shortage of labour while facing a peak of production orders. The second
wave happened in the first quarter of 2007, particularly in March, with 83 strikes, involving
54,000 workers. The third one exploded in the first two weeks of October 2007 with 88
strikes, involving over 100,000 workers.[17] And the last one evolved in the first quarter of
2008 and continued until July 2008 with 649 strikes.
In Vietnam, strikes and strike waves often go in parallel with waves of quitting and high
labour turnover. As Edwards and Scullion (1982) suggested, quitting is a form of industrial
conflict if we put it into the context of unsolved workers’ grievances. Workers’ discontent
was not born during a strike but originated and accumulated from the coercive day-to-day
labour process[18]. Despite successful wildcat strikes that immediately addressed the
economic demands of workers, they produced no associational power for workers to handle
other work-related grievances that can not be expressed via specific strike demands. Harsh
discipline, the management’s disrespect of workers, hostile working environment, intense
productivity pressure, and dim prospects for training and promotion, all contribute to
workers’ frustration in their jobs and their determination to seek for a change. Therefore,
though wildcat strikes forced employers to raise wages, they could not remove the discontent
of workers embedded in the labour process. In Vietnam, labour turnover in manufacturing
industry runs as high as 40 to 60 percent, which is exacerbated by huge waves of quitting
after strikes.
Quitting is an individual decision but when hundreds of thousands of workers opted for the
‘exit’ after ‘voice’ option (Hirschman 1970), it has become a collective action. As the labour
market gets tighter, employers find themselves in a fierce competition with other companies
to recruit enough workers for production. Our research finds that the trend of labour shortage
in industrialized regions in Vietnam tends to become acute. Among the 20 companies that
informed this research, two-thirds still lack from 200 to 3,000 workers and there is little
possibility that they will be able fill this labour gap in the short run. Regional labour shortage
is attributed partially to the emergence of industrial parks in the smaller provinces attracting
the local labour and particularly to the fact that migrant workers are turning away from the
industrial sector to join the booming service sector. The service sector of Vietnam is
dominated by small-sized enterprises and household businesses which offer better pay than
the industrial sector but often neglect social insurance obligations. Almost all workers in the
manufacturing factories I interviewed expressed their intention to quit their current jobs in
the near future. Some wish to further their study and training to find a skilled or office job,
10
others want to work for service businesses in the cities. A worker who recently quit a
garment company to work for a restaurant explained her decision:
In the restaurant, I have to work for long hours; I do not have social insurance
either but I prefer this job to the one in the factory because payment is better
and the working atmosphere is friendly. My colleagues at the restaurant are very
nice and we do not have to work under pressure like at the factory.
(Interview by the author with a worker of Garco 10, Hanoi, 25 May 2008)
Though this trend needs further research and evidence to be confirmed, it signals the start of
a structural shift of the economy from mass production to technology-intensive production in
the footstep of other regional countries like Singapore, Malaysia, and South Korea.
The Challenge from Below and Union Reform in Vietnam
The impacts of wildcat strikes did not reach the VGCL directly as strikes exploded but it was
amplified and transferred through two major channels: the labour press and the regional
authorities. When the Government and the Party were shocked by the strike waves, they
place an influence on the union organisation to take action in response. This section will start
with discussing how the wildcat strikes have been mediated by the press and the regional
authorities before they became a challenge to the State and the union.
The Press
Though it has long been argued by scholars that the media content in Vietnam is dictated by
the State, the boundaries of what is permissible have been expanded significantly in the last
decade[9]. The press has actively taken part in the investigation of corruption cases and
reflected the darker side of the society – things that they were not allowed to touch upon
before Doimoi. In the labour field, the press has been active in reporting the plight of
workers, especially those employed in the foreign-invested sector, from corporal punishment
of Vietnamese workers by foreign managers in the 1990s to wildcat strikes in the last five
years. The most prominent labour newspapers that effectively set the tone for the media in
covering labour issues are ‘Labour’ and ‘The Labourer’ – both controlled by the trade union.
As Tran (2007a and b) showed, the two labour newspapers have created public forums and
effectively pushed the state and labour unions to respond to demands of workers on strike.
During the first wave of strikes in early 2006, the two newspapers delivered the most
updated coverage of strikes which were backed up by interviews with VGCL leaders who
supported workers and urged the Government to raise the minimum wage.
The intensive pro-labour coverage of strikes by the labour press has created enormous public
attention towards workers’ plight and their demands. The huge attention to the problems of
workers became an invisible pressure on the State to take prompt action in response. A series
of new measures has been made by the Government and the Party to meet workers’demands
as reflected by the labour press. For instance, the Government raised the minimum wage
twice after the first strike waves: the first time in early 2006 and the second time in January
2008. When the press ran stories about migrant workers living in overcharged, poor-quality
accommodation, the Government required provincial authorities to support employers in
developing dormitories for workers. When the press pointed to weak enforcement as the
major cause of pervasive violations by employers of labour rights, the Government approved
the long-standing proposal of MOLISA to increase the number of labour inspectors. In Ho
11
Chi Minh city, for example, the number of labour inspectors has been raised from 7 to 100
since 2006.
The labour press, however, has received criticism because their one-sided coverage of
workers as victims and employers as exploitators has somehow encouraged workers to go on
strike. As an employers’ organisation official put it:
Not all employers violate the law. Workers go on strike because they want to
negotiate for higher wages. But the press made readers think that employers are
always the villains. This is bad for the investment climate”
(Interview by the author with Mr Huy, VCCI, 5 December 2005).
Recently, the two labour newspapers became suddenly quiet on the strike issues. Particularly
during the last strike wave in the first half of 2008, instead of daily coverage of strikes, the
two newspapers focused on social campaigns and the preparation for the national union
congress. Together with the stricter control of the media after the arrest of two reporters on
the PMU18 scandal[19], the State requested the labor press “to cover objectively and
honestly the implementation of the Party advocacy on international economic integration and
FDI attraction and to avoid one-sided information that may create negative reactions in
industrial relations and among the public” (Resolution 22 by the Party Central Committee,
issued on 5th June 2008).
The Regional Authorities
Attraction of foreign investment to increase provincial revenue is one of, if not the most,
prioritized task of the provincial authorities. As a prominent Vietnamese economist put it:
“Provincial revenue is the most important indicator of success and power of all provinces. It
is their primary target”[20]. As a result, wildcat strikes and waves of quitting pose a great
concern for the local governments because they harm the investment climate and adversely
affect investors. At the same time, the provincial governments are under pressure from the
national government to maintain social order in their localities. The common approach of the
local governments to wildcat strikes has been to give concessions to workers at first to end
strikes as soon as possible then use its administrative apparatus to prevent further strikes
while reporting to the national government for support.
After the first strike wave broke out on 28 January 2005, the HCMC People’s Committee
decided to set up a steering committee on strike settlement headed by the then-deputy
chairman of the city authority, Nguyen Thien Nhan, because strikes had gone out of control
and threatened “to seriously affect the investment climate if employers [of strike-hit
enterprises] lose their orders and have to close down their companies” [21]. The committee
comprised representatives of all departments, including the trade union and other mass
organisations like the Youth League, Women’s Union, among others. On 4 January 2006,
one day after the steering committee was set up, Nguyen Thien Nhan held a meeting with 40
employers at Linh Trung industrial zone and committed to “ending sabotage and trying all
means to stop strikes by Sunday the 8 January, and working out measures to share the
compensation for companies’ loss due to strikes”[22]
In order to end the strikes swiftly, one of the major solutions by the HCMC authority was to
satisfy workers’ demand – which was to increase the minimum wage. First, the HCMC union
was asked to report to the VGCL and urge the national union to request the Government to
12
raise the minimum wage. Then, the city people’s committee sent a proposal to the Prime
Minister asking for adjustment of the minimum wage.
FDI is not only the indicator of power and success of a province, it also strengthens the
province’s bargaining power in its relations with the central government and has a powerful
and robust impact on the de facto decentralization from the central economic policy.[23, 24]
The most strike-hit provinces including HCMC, Dong Nai, and Binh Duong are the biggest
attractors of FDI in the country. The authorities of these provinces undoubtedly have
enormous impact on decision-making at the national level. The proposal on the increase of
the minimum wage in 2006 by the HCMC authority was the final most important push to the
central government to nod at a 40 percent increase of the minimum wage after a long
hesitation.
On the other hand, as Malesky (2008) proved, the concentration of foreign investment goes
in line with the bargaining power of provincial leaders to pursue initiatives outside of the
central law. For instance, the authorities of strike-prone provinces initiated their own
measures beyond the law to address strikes in their provinces. Ho Chi Minh City organised
migrant workers in self-managed teams to improve the union’s approach to workers so as to
prevent strikes. The Federation of Labour of Dong Nai initiated a round of consultation on
wages with foreign investors’ associations which resulted in a reduction of strikes in 2008 in
these companies. Da Nang prevents strikes by setting up ‘core workers’ groups’ which are
consisted of team leaders and experienced workers who contact directly with the district
unions whenever there are signs of a dispute.
The central government maintains a tolerant attitude towards these local policy experiments
partly because of their reliance on the revenue generated by these FDI attractors and partly
due to their sympathy to the reform attempts of provincial authorities[24]. When these local
experiments gained initial success, they were embraced by the central governmens as models
for replication. For instance, the success of ad hoc strike taskforces in Ho Chi Minh city,
Binh Duong, and Dong Nai in settling wildcat strikes was legalized by the 2007 Labour
Code revision. The organisation of migrant workers into self-managed teams in HCMC was
praised by VGCL Chairman Dang Ngoc Tung, who recently urged Binh Duong and Dong
Nai to adopt the same model.[25]
Apart from the labour press, the governments of strike-hit provinces have become the second
channel to transfer strike impacts to the national institutions, including the State and the
VGCL. Moreover, not only did the authorities of industrialized provinces push the State to
make changes to its policy so as to settle strikes, they have also influenced the direction for
the changes undertaken by the national institutions in the face of labour protests.
Worker Activism, the State, and the Union
The relationship between the union and the Government, or in a narrow sense, the labour
authority (MOLISA) is complicated. On the one hand, the VGCL is responsible for
supporting the Government and its Ministries in implementing socio-economic policies. The
governmental Decree 133 issued in 1991 and the 2005 Decision number 07 of the Prime
Minister provided that the trade union and the labour authority coordinate in the making and
implementation of labour-related legislation and policies, compliance monitoring, and
grievance handling. The trade union can also apply for financial support from the national
and provincial governments to conduct their programs. Also, due to the lack of an
enforcement machinery, the union relies on the labour enforcement agency to have its own
13
legislation and policies implemented. Recently, for instance, MOLISA and VGCL jointly
issued a circular which allows district-level unions to unilaterally set up provisional unions at
any enterprises that have operated for more than six months. The enforcement of the circular
will be conducted by the labour inspectorate of MOLISA.
On the other hand, the national union plays the role of a quasi-independent industrial
relations partner, particularly in promoting wages and working conditions by pressuring
MOLISA to raise minimum wages and strengthen labour law enforcement. More often now,
the union is found disagreeing with MOLISA at important fora such as the National
Assembly. For instance, during the revision of Chapter 14 of the Labour Code, tensions
between MOLISA and VGCL ran high due to disagreements on some important points.
MOLISA included in the Draft a principle of “no work – no pay” to be imposed on strikers
and removed the right to strike in case of right disputes. However, the VGCL argued that
paying workers on strike is a good way to heal labour-management relations and to convince
them to return to work. Also, since 90 percent of wildcat strikes (statistics provided by the
VGCL) were caused by employers’ violations of labour rights, the removal of the right to
strike in right-based disputes would deprive workers of their last weapon to fight for their
own rights. To lobby for its own proposals, VGCL organized a number of consultative
meetings at all levels of the union structure, inviting key members of the National Assembly
to union conferences where union members strongly opposed MOLISA’s draft revision. The
union’s newspapers ran a series of analytical articles and stories against the labour
authority’s proposals. The chairwoman of VGCL vocally defended the union’s proposals at
the Cabinet, the National Assembly, and Central Party Committee’s meetings. Eventually,
MOLISA conceded by allowing workers in right-based disputes to temporarily stop working
(rather than recognizing these actions as “legitimate strikes”) and limited the scope of the
“no work – no pay” provision to workers who actively participate in strikes not those who
are affected by strikes. But as the law provides no criteria for the distinction between active
strikers and affected workers, it is almost impossible to apply the “no work, no pay”
provision in practice.
It should be noted that at the provincial level, the union maintains a close relationship with
the authorities (the people’s committee). The union has the responsibility to coordinate with
other provincial departments to realize the decisions and plans of the provincial people’s
committees. An important amount of funding for the provincial union also comes from the
provincial budget. While the central VGCL sits in only selective governmental meetings, the
provincial union is considered an integral part of the local administration. The concerns of
the provincial authority over wildcat strikes, therefore, are directly translated into tasks for
the union. On the other hand, the implementation of the union’s initiatives is secured by the
power of the people’s committee.
The influence of the local authority on the union is an important force driving
decentralization within the VGCL system. The central VGCL shows significant respect for
the connection between the provincial union and the people’s committee by giving the
subordinate unions considerable freedom to perform local tasks. Decentralization and local
autonomy, therefore, have enabled provincial unions to carry out a number of experiments in
settling and preventing wildcat strikes. The pioneers in this regard include unions of HCMC,
Binh Duong, Dong Nai, Da Nang, Hai Phong and Hai Duong. The HCMC Federation of
Labour, for example, initiated experiments in setting up union funds to support enterprise
union leaders, and organising migrant workers into self-managed teams so as to approach
workers in their communities. The Dong Nai provincial union recently initiated the first
14
round of wage negotiation with associations of Japanese and Korean investors in the
province, which effectively prevented strikes in these companies in the first half of 2008.
According to Nguyen Van Binh, a union official at the legal department of VGCL, “the
provincial federations of labour enjoy enormous autonomy to develop and implement their
own solutions to the problems they are facing. They have to be active in this regard because
they are under constant pressure from the local authority”.
While the Government is more concerned about economic growth, the Party prioritizes
political stability. The recent waves of strikes are perceived as a potential threat to the
credibility of the Party because the union is subordinate to the Party and the Party is
supposed ideologically to be the vanguard of the working class and strikes show that the
Party has not done its job of leading and protecting workers. This is clearly stated in the 2007
Vietnam Communist Party Resolution on the Working class:
Since the launch of the economic reform … a large part of the working class has
not benefited from the fruits of economic growth as they should deserve … this
is partly attributed to the insufficient attention of the Party towards upholding
the position of the working class in the new era” (page 2).
The Communist Party has widely regarded itself as originated from the working class. Thus,
it will be ideologically and politically dangerous if the Party fails to relate itself to the
working class and show its sympathy for workers’ difficulties expressed through strikes.
Apart from the above rhetorical attempt to assert the central role of the working class, as a
way to sooth the frustration of workers, the most important action by the Party, through the
VGCL, is expanding the Party’s membership and influence over the non-public sector – the
most strike-affected area. The Party sets a target of “recruiting the majority of workers in the
non-public sector as Party members by the year 2020” and “establishing Party cells in all
enterprises” [26]. Later, Directive 22 emphasized the role of the union in “containing and
limiting the illegitimate strikes” while replicating successful models of Party cells and social
organisations in enterprises. It means that the Party is driving the union toward a mandate of
peace containment and Party member recruitment among workers. At the provincial level, in
a recent decision by the Party Central Committee, the provincial party committee (tinh uy)
rather than the national VGCL will make appointment of key union officials. This decision
will double the subordination of the provincial unions to the local party committees and
diminish their connection with the national VGCL.
In short, while the union’s growing independence from the government promises the
tendency for the VGCL to act more like a bona fide union in promoting workers’ interests,
its subordination to the Party both at the central and regional level threatens to distract and
even obstruct the union’s efforts to reform itself.
Will there be a Union Reform?
The direct impact of wildcat strikes which were mediated and spread by the media, tend to
drive the unions, especially the intermediary-level unions (district and provincial) toward
acting as a real representative organisation of workers’ rights and interests in negotiation
with employers at the workplace and higher levels. When strikes first broke out, the unions
played a fire-fighting role together with the local labour authorities (Clarke and Pringle
2008). This measure quickly proved to be less effective when workers were even encouraged
by the authority’s intervention and walked out more often and on a larger scale.
15
The union, as a result, started to seek preventive measures to help develop sound industrial
relations at the workplace. First, the union emphasized increasingly provision of training for
union officers. The VGCL funds long-term training for professional unionists, 79% of whom
work at provincial unions, but there is no regular budget allocation from the VGCL for the
training of primary union leaders. However, unions in some of the most industrialized
provinces have used their own budget to organize short training courses (2 days to 1 week)
for primary union leaders. These courses cover labour and union legislation, negotiating
skills and collective bargaining, labour contracts, and dispute settlement procedure.
Legal counselling services have been made more available to workers. Counselling centers
and offices have been set up at each provincial and sectoral union. There is a legal advice
group at the district union and at the workplace, at least one member of the union executive
board must be assigned to provide legal advice to workers in the enterprise. So far, 16
centers, 32 officies and 332 counselling groups have been set up. 72 professional union
counsellors were trained and certified by the provincial departments of justice. Thousands of
workers receive legal advice from the union counselling system every year.
At the workplace, VGCL considers collective bargaining to be the most important measure
to protect workers’ interests. In Directive 1 issued in October 2006 by VGCL regarding the
criteria for union evaluation, the most important condition for a primary union to receive the
‘Strong Union Award’ – the most prestigious annual award by the VGCL for the best
workplace unions – is to negotiate and sign a collective agreement with better-than-minimum
benefits for workers. To assist the primary unions in collective bargaining, the VGCL also
requires the higher-level unions to provide support before and during the bargaining process
and explore the possibility to negotiate above-workplace agreements with groups of
employers.
The VGCL also improved the role of higher-level unions in protecting workers’ interests
during strikes and labour disputes. In Directive 1455 issued on 26 August 2008, the VGCL
required the provincial unions to assign staff to strike-prone areas to follow the situation and
settle labour disputes timely before they turn into strikes. For example, Ho Chi Minh city,
Dong Nai and Binh Duong have encouraged migrant workers to join self-managed teams
which are based in the workers’ community. Through these teams, the higher-level unions
provide information on labour legislation for workers and identify signals of potential
wildcat strikes among the migrant workers. The EPZ and district unions collaborated with
the provincial labour inspectorates to investigate enterprises suspected of violating the law.
For instance, the union-labour inspection collaboration in Ho Chi Minh City resulted in
sanctions against tfor evasion of social insurance[27].
Emerging from the debates among the union circles prior to the 10th National Union
Congress was the idea that the third function of the union, which is to protect members’
rights and interests, should be officially recognized as the most important task of the
organisation. This proposal has been reflected in the draft political report of the union at the
Congress, as follows:
The union should focus on renewing the methods and contents of union
activities at all levels with the utmost emphasis on the workplace
level…Decisively shift union activities toward protecting the legitimate and
16
legal rights and interests of union members, civil servants, and workers; build
sound, stable and progressive industrial relations[28]
With all these efforts, however, the trade union has not been able to tackle its core problem –
the weakness of workplace unions in representing members. The vast majority of collective
agreements are a replication of the labour law with minor extra welfare provisions. The
number of strikes in the first 8 months of 2008 has surpassed that of 2007; still, none was
organised by the workplace union. Though the reformists in the union proposed a shift
toward prioritizing the union function of protecting members’ interests over the State
functions of mobilization and education of workers, the union has not worked out any
feasible measures to realize this advocacy. As long as the unions are dependent on the
management, their goal of representing members and organising strikes can hardly be
realized. As Clarke and Pringle (2008) argued, the subordination of the trade union to
management is a structural phenomenon. As the union election rules and procedures still
allow the management to manipulate election outcomes, the rank-and-file workers would not
be able to elect their real leaders. When they are unable to negotiate with the employers
through the formal unions, rank-and-file workers will naturally turn to the informal leaders to
initiate unconstitutional collective actions.
Apart from the challenge from below, the directions for union reform in Vietnam are
influenced by the political interests from the top – the Communist Party. The VGCL’s
subordination to the Party and obligation to join with the government in conducting its
administration functions have significantly constrained the organisation’s effort to become a
representative union. On the one hand, the Government and the Party provide the most
important financial and political back-up for the VGCL. At the local level, the trade unions
rely on the regional governments to facilitate the implementation of their programs as well as
their coordination with other departments. On the other hand, both the Party and the
Government require the union to maintain industrial peace and social order by reducing
wildcat strikes. In other words, the union is supposed to contain worker’s activism rather
than extending it. As Truong Tan Sang, the standing member of the Central Party Secretariat
said:
For a long time we only paid attention to economic growth but did not pay much
attention to develop political cells at enterprises which is a strength of the
Party…This [settling strikes] is not only the Union’s responsibility. The whole
political system has to get involved in order to urgently find out measures for a
breakthrough so we ourselves will lead strikes or we do not strike but resolve
disputes through negotiations, thus other people can not take advantage of the
disputes and strikes”[29].
By pointing to leaders of strikes as people who took advantage of disputes and strikes, the
Party has placed the spontaneous representatives of workers at the workplace out of
legitimacy. The measures of the Party, consequently, would not include recruiting these
strike organisers into the union contingent or reforming the workplace unions into real
representatives of workers. Instead, political training and Party membership extension will
become the two major solutions advocated by the Party. Since 2007, as a result, the VGCL
increased the scale of political training among workers. The HCMC Federation of Labour,
for instance, provided political training to 3,500 workers in 2007. The union also encouraged
workers in private and foreign-owned companies to join the Party so as to increase Party
membership in the non-public sector.
17
While the political backing of the Party may provide the union with more resources and
power to carry out its reform, it will constrain the union’s steps toward a radical change in
fear that worker activism is encouraged rather than limited. Given the dependence of
enterprise unions on the management, the influence of the Party will further detach the trade
union from their members. Furthermore, the guaranteed political position that the VGCL
enjoys at the national level will mitigate the pressure for reform that wildcat strikes from
below are posing.
Conclusion
Wildcat strikes in Vietnam have evolved from piecemeal protests against employers’
violations of labour rights into well-organised waves of strikes that enabled workers to
bargain with the employers for higher wages and better working conditions. The growth in
scale and sophistication of strikes is attributed to the network of migrant workers living in
workers’ villages, the organising role of team leaders and experienced workers, and the prolabour responses of the press and the regional authorities. When the labour market becomes
tighter and there has been no alternative bargaining mechanism available for workers,
wildcat strikes continue to be the only way for workers to negotiate with the management.
Strikes, unfortunately, can not solve all workers’ problems. When the management is
authoritarian and the workplace unions can hardly represent their interests, workers opt for
quitting after strikes as a way to show their discontent with the management. Apart from
wildcat strikes, high labour turnover, labour shortage, and the instability of the labour force
have become acute problems facing the State and the economy.
The pressure of the rank-and-file activism which has been mediated by the labour press and
the regional authorities has posed an unprecedented challenge to the union to reform itself
into a representative union. At the same time, the VGCL was pushed by the Party to maintain
industrial peace and minimize worker activism. The union is facing a dilemma: on the one
hand, it is urged to stand on the side of its members to represent their interests in negotiation
with the employers at the workplace; on the other hand, it detaches itself from members by
serving the Party’s purposes. The VGCL can not become a real union while it remains a
State organisation. The tensions between these two factors will only intensify and present
increasing challenges for trade unions in the face of continuing wild cat strikes in Vietnam.
18
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
This paper is based on the interim findings of a research project ‘Post-Socialist Trade
Unions, Low Pay and Decent Work: Russia, China and Vietnam’ funded by the
Economic and Social Research Council within its Non-Governmental Public Action
Programme (Grant RES-155-25-0071). The author is the head of the project research
team in Vietnam.
Clarke, S. and T. Pringle, "Can Party-led Trade Unions Represent Their Members?" .
Journal of Industrial Relations (in press).
Angie Ngoc Tran, "Alternatives to the “Race to the Bottom” in Vietnam Minimum
Wage Strikes and Their Aftermath", Labour Studies Journal 32, no. 4 (2007).
S., Clarke, C.H. Lee, and Q.C. Do, "From Rights to Interests: The Challenge of
Industrial Relations in Vietnam", Journal of Industrial Relations 49, no. 4 (2007).
Hobsbawm, E., Labouring Men, Studies in the History of Labour. (London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964).
Deyo, F.C., Beneath the Miracle. (London: University of California Press, 1989)
S. Frenkel, and J. Harrod, (eds), Industrialization and Labour Relations:
Contemporary Research in Seven Countries (New York: ILR Press, 1995): p.322.
Kuruvilla, S. and C.S. Venkataratnam, "Economic Development and Industrial
Relations: the Case of South and Southeast Asia". Industrial Relations Journal 27,
no. 1 (1996)
Angie Ngoc Tran, "The Third Sleeve Emerging Labor Newspapers and the Response
of the Labor Unions and the State to Workers’ Resistance in Vietnam", Labour
Studies Journal 32, no. 3 (2007)
Chang-hee, Lee, "Recent Industrial Relations Developments in China and Viet Nam:
The Transformation of Industrial Relations in East Asian Transition Economies",
Journal of Industrial Relations 48, no. 3 (2006)
For further information about the Project, please go to:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/NGPA/pdf/Large_Project_abstracts/PostSocialist_Trade_Unions,_Low_Pay_and_Decent_Work.pdf
Initial Project findings can be found at:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/NGPA/Research_projects/briefs/Clarke.pdf
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
VGCL 2007 Annual Review of Labour Disputes and Strikes (unpublished), January
2008
R. Franzosi, The Puzzle of Strikes: Class and State Strategies in Postwar Italy, (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
Tan Duc Le (2005) ‘Strike Causes’ Vietnam Economic Times, 132 , 01/02.
http://www.vneconomy.com.vn/vet/?param=info&name=Business%20report&id=53
14. Last updated on 16/03/05
Chang-hee Lee, Unpublished ILO Discussion Paper on Promotion of Collective
Bargaining in Vietnam, (Hanoi: ILO Vietnam, March 2008)
Report on strikes from January to August 2008, Legal Department, VGCL, 29
August 2008
The statistics above have been synthesized from different sources including:
Synthesis report of Vietnam Research Team (2006), MOLISA report to the Prime
Minister on strikes and labour disputes (March 2007), and VGCL report to the
Central Party Committee (October 2007).
19
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
Chan, C., The Challenge of Labour in China: Strikes and the Changing Labour
Regime in Global Factories, (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Warwick, 2008)
Carlyle Thayer, "Hanoi Party Tricks", Wall street Journal, June 19, 2008
Nguyen Dinh Cung of the Central Institute for Economic Managmeent, quoted in
Malesky, E.J., "Straight Ahead on Red: How Foreign Direct Investment Empowers
Subnational Leaders", The Journal of Politics 70, no. 1: p.101
Confidential report by the HCMC People’s Committee to the HCMC Party
Committee on 28 February 2006
ibid., p. 5
P. Jones-Luong, "Economic Decentralization in Kazakhstan: Causes and
Consequences", in The Transformation of Central Asia: States and Scoeities from
Soviet Rule to Independence edited by Jones-Luong (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2003)
Malesky, E.J., "Straight Ahead on Red: How Foreign Direct Investment Empowers
Subnational Leaders". The Journal of Politics 70, no. 1 (January 2008)
The Labourer Online, 25 February 2008, http://www.nld.com.vn/tintuc/congdoan/216257.asp
Party Resolution on Working Class, Section B, para. 5
Vietbao, 'DN sẽ “hầu” tòa nếu trốn đóng bảo hiểm cho NLĐ' Enterprises will be sued
at the Court if they evade social insurance contributions for workers, 10 February
2004.
Draft Report by the Standing Committee of 9th Union Tenure at the 10th National
Union Congress, provided by the Legal Department, VGCL
Keynote address by Truong Tan Sang at the meeting on 19 July 2008 in Ho Chi Minh
city with leaders of 15 provinces and cities, ministries and branches to discuss the
implementation of Resolution 22-CT/TU dated 5 June 2008 of the Central Party’s
Secretariat on strengthening leadership and direction for building sound industrial
relations at enterprises
20