Discipline or Dignity?
Strikes (dinh cong) are beginning to replace go-slows (lan cong) as the predominant form of protest exercised by Vietnamese workers. This radicalisation is the result of savage 'marketisation' of the economy, and the bankrupcy of state-run trade unions
UNDER THE "STATE SOCIALIST" SYSTEM go-slows were pervasive, and as a result workers were accused of indiscipline and laziness by labour managers. Under economic liberalisation go-slows are no longer a viable means of labour protest since managers have unlimited power over individual wages and are free to hire and fire workers. Piece-rate wages and shiftwork are used to enforce capitalist timediscipline, thereby reducing the effectiveness of go-slows. In response to the new capitalist regime of production, and a more authoritarian structure of management, workers are resorting to open confrontation with managers and state officials.
The main reason for strikes both before and after the new Labour Code was introduced are:
i) the failure to pay minimum wages and long delays in the payment of wages;
ii) the extension of the working day to 12-15 hours without compensation, as well as forced unpaid night and weekend shifts;
iii) the mistreatment of workers and authoritarian management practices.
In nearly all strikes the "lack of democracy" has been a significant issue. Particularly in state enterprises the issue has not been wages, but the changes in the factory regime which have seen increased managerial control and the introduction of a hierarchy of work, time-discipline and surveillance which are characteristic of the capitalist labour process. A 13-day strike by 200 workers in a state-run rubber factory in 1990 was precipitated by what workers saw as the abuse of power by the manager and an authoritarian management regime. The workers formed a strike committee and dismissed the manager. Similar action was taken by 170 women workers at the Hung Yen Sewing Enterprise No.2, who protested against the "lack of democracy."
Another critical issue has been the way workers are treated by employers and their failure to respect workers' dignity. Workers have been subject to humiliation and beatings, particularly in foreign joint venture factories. In one Taiwanese joint venture factory women workers were subject to harassment and forced to do menial tasks for the director such as tying his shoe laces. A trade union cadre
Gerard Greenfield described this as being typical of "their failure to respect workers' dignity." When 650 workers went on strike at the Ree Young clothing factory in February 1993, one of the issues raised was that the Korean supervisors were beating them. More recently, in February 1995, 250 workers stopped work at Thien Phu Co Ltd in Ho Chi Minh City to protest against the bruta treatment of workers by the Korean manager. The manager responded by increasing the working day to 12 hours and threatened to sack those that refused.
The outbreak spontaneous strikes over the past five years has not only threatened the government's attempts to attract foreign capital to a cheap, disciplined labour force, but strikes in state enterprises in particular posed serious problems for the legitimacy of the Communist Party and its mass organisations.
A number of Vietnamese journalists and trade union cadres have publicly criticised the government for failing to respond to these violations of workers rights because of the risk of scaring off foreign investors. In the Ministry of Labour's own newspaper, Lao Dong va Xa Hoi (Labour and Society) it was argued that for the groups involved in drafting the law on strikes, workers' rights and interests were subordinate to concerns for social stability and the impact on the interests of foreign capital. At the time the laws were drafted the Prime Minister, Vo Van Kiet, argued that the Labour Code must be determined by the need for the "liberalisation and development of the country's labour force" and must "create favourable conditions for every labourer to have a job and to work freely." Kiet then addressed the rights of capital, adding that, the law "should protect workers' rights and the rights of employers as well." According to the trade union journalist, Tran Thi Sanh, no employer has been charged for violation of the Labour Code, despite the fact that only 17% have signed collective bargaining agreements, provided social insurance or overtime pay, and only 15% of foreign companies and joint ventures have allowed workers to organise trade unions. Among those trade unions which have been formed.
most are controlled by management and the trade union representative paid as much as ten times the average worker's wage.
Vietnam *
While the recognition of the right to strike under the new Labour Code was first thought to be a breakthrough for Vietnamese workers, it is clear that strikes have been effectively criminalised. None of the twenty or more strikes which occurred since the introduction of the new labour laws have been legal. According to Hoang Minh Chuc, Vice President of the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL), while employers have failed to adhere to government labour regulations, workers have failed to follow the "PetitionReconciliation-Arbitration-Court" procedure, and as such have broken the law by going on strike. Under the law on strikes and government and Party decrees, a 'legal" strike requires nearly two months of arbitration and negotiations with employers or state enterprise managers before any action by workers is possible. A directive issued by the Ministry of Labour in January 1994 ordered that workers must give employers 10 days' notice before going on strike. The directive also instructed local labour offices to establish a 'Board of Conciliation' at all major state enterprises under their jurisdiction. Before workers are allowed to approach labour officials with a 10 day warning of industrial action they must observe a number of arbitration procedures conducted through the Board Workers must first present a petition to the city or provincial arbitration committee and notify the Ministry of Labour and the city or provincial trade union officials of their grievances. Only if the dispute is not resolved within 20 days will the matter be passed on to the state committee of labour arbitrators. If the dispute is not settled by the state arbitration committee after 30 days a strike is permitted if it is supported by two-thirds of workers. Once a strike has commenced a list of strike organisers, the content of demands and the intended length of the strike must be provided to state officials on each day of the strike. Any strike can be stopped by order of the Prime and strikes are not permitted in strategic industries.
This prolonged system of arbitration is not only weighted in favour of 'national
The author is Associate Lecturer in Asian Studies at the Murdoch University, Western Australia, and a collaborator of the Asia Monitor Research Center in Hong Kong
International Viewpoint n° 275 25
* Vietnam interests' (political stability and economic growth), but is based on the assumption that workers and employers are able to negotiate on a free and equal basis, despite the fact that workers can be sacked at any time during this process. The requirement that a list of names of strike leaders be presented on each day of the strike simply helps the employers and managers in targeting workers' representatives for dismissal during or after a dispute. In 1994 workers in the Song Be Garment Export Company stopped work for two hours to protest against a new regime of fixed quotas which forced them to undertake unpaid overtime. Although the Board of Directors agreed to reduce the quotas, the Director later rescinded the agreement and ordered workers who could not meet the original quotas to resign. Two days after the strike, three of the workers who were the first to stop work were sacked.
Intimidation by managers and officials, and direct confrontation with the Party-state bureaucracy, has also tended to undermine workers' ability to put forward their claims. The time constraints imposed by the law and the pressure by authorities to simplify their demands or restrict their demands to wage-related issues has forced more 'abstract' demands (such as greater factoryfloor democracy) lower on the agenda. The law on strikes explicitly states that "strikes are illegal if they do not concern issues relating to workers in the enterprise" thereby undercutting the right to stop work in support of workers in other factories.
Recent illegal' strikes have not only focused attention on the attempts by the government to effectively criminalise strikes by imposing a complex system of arbitration designed to control the expression of grievances and erode workers' solidarity. It also highlights the failure of the official trade union movement to act independently of the Party and State. Bound by the interests of the Party and state, official trade unions have failed to respond to workers' demands for genuine representation of their interests in the face of foreign capital and powerful state enterprise managers. In the private sector workers employers continue to exploit job insecurity and growing unemployment, withholding wages and sacking workers who attempt to organise unions.
The trade union clearly faces the dilemma of being unable to represent workers against the Party-state. As the trade unionist and writer, Xuan Cang, has argued, "There is a paradox in the trade union's activities: the popular movements which take place without the trade union's participation are more active than the movements organised by the union." In 26 International Viewpoint March 1996 some sectors workers have formed 'labour associations'. In their criticism of the failure of trade union officials to respond to the crisis faced by workers in the transition to a market economy, Hoang Chi Bao and
Nguyen Thanh Tuan have argued that workers are responding to trade union passivity and the negligence and corruption of trade union cadres in the workplace by forming "labour associations' (hoi lao grassroots workers' organisations have been created in the absence of assistance by official trade union organisations or in direct confrontation with them.
Labour associations were first formed in
Hanoi, Haiphong, Ho Chi Minh City and the provinces of Song Be and Khanh Hoa.
By mid-1993 some 700 labour associations with 100 000 members had been formed independently by workers in the non-state sector. Labour associations have been organised by cyclo drivers, cooks, and market porters, as well as factory workers. To some extent the trade union leadership views this self-organisation by workers outside of official trade unions as a threat. The President of the VGCL, Nguyen Van Tu, has asserted that workers' committees in the private sector are only "temporary" and will be replaced by trade unions.
It is not clear whether this will form the basis of an autonomous trade union movement or a radical restructuring of the existing trade unions. What is clear is that strikes will continue despite attempts to impose discipline and order from above in the name of national unity and 'socialism." The claims of the political elite to a agenda is revealed as nothing more than an attempt to subordinate workers to the dictates of the capitalist labour market while claiming to be the legitimate representatives of the national working class. In the transition to capitalism Vietnamese workers are expected to forfeit the aims of the Revolution and surrender their rights in the face of global capital. But as these strikes have shown, the political elite and an emerging capitalist class have This article was first printed in #19 of Asian Labour Update, a quarterly news bulletin on labour issues in the Asia-Pacific region. Annual subscription is US$13. Asia-Pacific labour groups and NGOs may request a complementary subscription. Contact: AMRC, 444 Nathan Road, 8-B, Kowloon, Hong Kong. Tel (852) 2332 1346, fax 2385 5319, E-mail <AMRC@hk.super.net SOURCES: Lao Dong (Labour), February 14, 1995; Lao Dong va Xa Hoi (Labour and Society), July 14-20, 1994 and October 20-26, 1994; Lao Dong va Cong Doan (Labour and Trade Unions), October, 1994; Tap Chi Cong San (Communist Review), 10, 1992; The Saigon Times, March 23-29, 1995; Thoi Bao Kinh Te Viet Nam (Vietnam Economic Times), April 24-27, 1994; Vietnamese Trade Unions, No.3, 1995; World Bank, Viet Nam: Transition to the Market, 1993.
been unable to make Vietnamese workers forget their radical past. And as Vietnamese workers face the violent and repressive labour conditions of a new "Asian Tiger', they are once again in need of the international solidarity expressed by workers movements throughout the world over thirty years ago. * Beaten and cheated no longer! WIldcat strikes are a response to inhuman exploitation and trade union complicity with the state and employers Three weeks after the new Labour Code came into effect on January 1, 1995, over 1000 workers went on strike at the Dong Nai Industrial Sewing Company, in Dong
Nai Province, marking the beginning of a new wave of wild-cat strikes in southern Vietnam. The company director had failed to provide a Tet (Lunar New Year) bonus to compensate workers for unpaid overtime and low wages. Instead the management continued to deduct food expenses and other charges from wages which were already below the legal minimum. Low pay and poor health and safety conditions had already forced 600 workers (25% of the workforce) to leave the factory without pay. Those who remained were forced to work 4-8 hours of daily, unpaid overtime. While the new Labour Code requires 150% overtime pay and 200% on holidays and Sundays, workers continued to be unpaid in the lead-up to the Lunar New Year (January 31). The director also refused to sign a collective bargaining agreement which is required under the new labour law. Despite this clear violation of laws on wages and working conditions by the company management, the striking workers were immediately condemned by government and trade union officials for violating the Labour Code. The 'problem' at the Dong Nai Industrial Sewing Company was that "workers had failed to understand the new labour laws and did not act accordingly." A similar argument was used to discredit the industrial action taken by 800 women workers in a factory under 100% foreign ownership earlier this year. Despite the official claim that the workers were ignorant of the Labour Code, they clearly demonstrated their awareness of the provisions of the Code by demanding that the employer provide social insurance and maternity leave according to the new labour regulations. [GG] *