Towards an independent workers’ voice in Vietnam?

ABSTRACT

The 2019 Vietnamese Labour Law, coming into effect on 1 January 2021, allows for the establishment of workers’ representative organisations, namely Internal Employee Organisations (IEOs), independent from official trade unions of the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour. This reflects widespread endemic industrial conflicts marked by illegal wildcat strikes led by unofficial workers’ representatives in the absence of effective trade union representation. The new legislative framework can be seen as a significant step towards industrial democracy and there is the potential to see a change of course in Vietnamese industrial relations in regards to representative dynamics at the workplace level, with likely outcomes in terms of working conditions, law enforcement and conflict resolution to be assessed. However, more than two years have transpired since the legislation was enacted, no IEO has been established to date. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of why this is the case. It also demonstrates how the corporatist and authoritarian political system in Vietnam has adapted to sustain its longevity and legitimacy in the era of globalisation. Finally, the paper outlines a research agenda on the conditions of emergence, development and future function of IEOs.

KEYWORDS:

• Vietnam industrial relations
• strikes
• internal employee organisations (IEOs)
• Labour Law 2019

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In many significant respects, Vietnam and China can be regarded as a pair. Factors that might account for their similarities include geographical proximity, historical traditions of Confucianism, similar domestic economies, which are predominantly agrarian and rice cultivating, familiarity between the two parties’ senior leadership and the mutual effect of the other’s experience in internal debates. In the processes of economic reform, both countries have broadly followed parallel paths (Kerkvliet et al. 1999). Politically, both have maintained centralised political control in the hands of their respective Communist parties, unlike other transition economies in Europe, which have seen the demise of their communist governments. There is still a lack of democratic institutions in both countries, and political pluralism is certainly not on the agenda. The two countries have shown of a combination of economic liberalism with political conservatism. Turley (1993) observed that Vietnam and China seemed to stand apart, implementing similar reform strategies, suggesting the emergence of a distinctive Asian, or at least Sino-Vietnamese, socialism.

There are, however, some significant differences. Wurfel (1993) argued that compared to China, Vietnam’s economic ‘open-door’ and other market-oriented reforms must result in greater sensitivity to world economic forces and vulnerability to external influences. Secondly, Vietnam’s Communist Party regimes was generally less ideologically strident and its system of rule less divisive than its Chinese counterpart (Kerkvliet et al. 1999) (see also Womack 1992).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anne Cox

Dr. Anne Cox is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Business, Faculty of Business and Law, University of Wollongong. She researches and publishes in three main areas, namely the transfer of multinational companies' HRM/IR policies and practices across borders, the transformation of HRM/IR systems in developing countries, and gender equity.

Stéphane Le Queux

Dr. Stéphane Le Queux is Senior Lecturer in Employment Relations at the College of Business, Law and Governance, Division of Tropical Environments and Societies, James Cook University, Australia. Research Fellow: Cairns Institute and CITBA (JCU Australia), Sustainability Research Cluster (JCU Singapore), MPOWER (Massey University, New Zealand), Work Research Institute (Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand), CRIMT (Montreal University, Laval University & HEC Montreal, Canada), CNRS/IRN China-Norms II, Scientific Correspondent (Australia, NZ and Asia-Pacific) IRES (France).