Vietnam Workers Find Their Voice

Workers of the world unite, implored communism’s creator, Karl Marx. And in communist Vietnam, that’s just what they’re starting to do.

More than four decades after the communists came to power in northern Vietnam, this country is facing unprecedented discontent in its labor force.

Fed up with abusive foreign supervisors and sweatshop conditions, Vietnamese are walking off the job in record numbers in a country where strikes were illegal until three years ago.

Of the 24 legally recognized strikes during the first three months of the year, 18 were in factories controlled by foreign investors.

The dilemma for Hanoi: How do you balance the country’s growing dependency on foreign investment with standing up for labor rights?

State news media have publicized some worker complaints to pressure foreign business operations, but the government has remained neutral on the issues of specific strikes, which often end with labor complaints unresolved.

Authorities are working on setting up labor courts to deal with disputes, but so far, even with a labor code on the books to define worker rights and employer obligations, enforcing the rules is proving an elusive goal.

“Strikes are occurring for different reasons. Primarily, we’re seeing that employers aren’t protecting the rights of workers,” said Phan Duc Binh, a lawyer in the Labor Ministry. “Now we’ve got foreign investors coming in who don’t know anything about our rules.”

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In southern Vietnam, high-profile incidents of physical abuse against employees at factories working under contract to the American footwear giant Nike have fueled charges that foreign companies exploit Vietnamese labor.

That and the growing disparity between Vietnam’s neophyte capitalists and the labor force underscore an awkward rift that begs the Communist Party’s authority and mandate.

“This is not only a country that needs foreign investment,” Binh said. “We need to build a system of law that protects the worker.”

It is the ultimate contradiction in Vietnam, a self-professed workers’ haven.

Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese nationalists took on communism in the 1930s as a convenient ally in the fight against French colonial rule.

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When North Vietnam proclaimed itself a communist republic in the 1950s, it was scarcely an industrialized society--a basic requisite for communism.

Only now, as the economic doctrines of communist rule wane, is the country beginning to develop heavy industry and a manufacturing capability. And a labor movement is emerging, bringing demands for equality, respect and a bigger share of the country’s wealth.

Foreign investment is creating more and better-paying jobs, and the standard of living in cities is on the rise--albeit modestly.

But more and more workers feel reduced to cogs in a machine directed by foreign money and Vietnamese partners.

Fewer than 3,000 people nationwide went on strike in 1994. Two years later, quadruple that number walked out in Ho Chi Minh City alone. The trend is still on the rise.

“We often complain to our supervisors that we aren’t machines, we’re human beings,” said Ho Thi Thanh, a union representative at Nike’s troubled shoe operation in Cu Chi, 25 miles from Ho Chi Minh City.

Down a dust-choked road from the South Korean-owned Sam Yang Co. factory, which works for Nike, Thanh balanced on a tiny plastic stool at a tea stall and explained the difficulties at her troubled workplace.

In May, a line supervisor smacked a worker across the hip with the sole of a Nike sneaker to make the employee work faster.

It was a repeat performance of a highly publicized incident last year, when a South Korean floor manager used the rubber sole of a shoe to beat an employee over the head. An ad hoc Vietnamese labor tribunal gave that woman a three-month suspended prison term.

In late June, another Nike floor manager was sentenced to six months behind bars for abusing workers. That decision came days after former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, hired by Nike to review its labor practices in Asia, said he had uncovered incidents of abuse, but no widespread pattern.

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Nike insists labor relations are on the mend in its factories--all of which are open to journalists only when accompanied by a Nike regional executive from Hong Kong.

Thanh, however, said problems still plague Sam Yang. The factory’s workers are still without a group contract, leaving them vulnerable to random firings with little recourse as a union, she said.

“Now if you complain, the supervisors begin looking for reasons to fire you,” she said.

Similar troubles are reported at factories in Ho Chi Minh City, the port city of Haiphong and the capital, Hanoi.

Apart from outright abuse, many workers at both foreign-owned and state-run companies complain of harsh working conditions and low wages.

On the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City, thousands of young men and women toil in the state-owned An Lac Footwear Co.

Even outside, the clatter of the factory’s manual sewing machines is deafening. The summer sun shining down on the factory’s corrugated metal roof can send the temperature inside soaring to nearly 100 degrees. Inside, ceiling fans whirl in a futile effort to cut the suffocating heat.

Women are jammed along a series of assembly lines that churn out up to 7,000 pairs of shoes each day for Adidas, Fila and All-Star.

For their labors, employees at foreign-owned factories earn about 20 cents an hour, the minimum wage set by a government keen to attract foreign investment.

Although foreign labor activists have focused attention on such wages, by Vietnamese standards, the pay isn’t bad, conceded Thanh, the union representative at Sam Yang. It produces an annual income of roughly $600 a year, which is half the average income in Ho Chi Minh City but about four times annual earnings in rural areas.

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For Vietnam’s one-party government, calming the uneasy laborers is a delicate balancing act between ideology and pragmatism.

It is the influx of foreign investment that in many cases has salvaged factories that atrophied under Vietnam’s centrally planned economy.

Before South Vietnam fell in 1975, An Lac Footwear produced shoes for Bata, a Canadian footwear company. With the communists ascendant in Vietnam, An Lac became a primary supplier of shoe uppers for the Soviet Union.

In the mid-1990s, investment from Taiwan and South Korea saved the factory with orders from major shoe companies from around the world.

“Since foreign employers came to Vietnam, they have offered more jobs,” conceded Thanh, the Sam Yang worker. “But they are also bringing problems.”