he direct and biggest reasons include: workers being paid very low, which is far beyond their effort and employers breaking the Labor Code and the Law on Trade Union.

PM Nguyen Tan Dung, at a meeting with the Chairman of the Vietnam Labor Confederation in late February, asked the confederation to strive for slashing strikes by a half in 2012 in order to stabilize the investment environment.

According to a report of the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs, since 1995, a total of 4,142 strikes have been recorded in Vietnam. Up to 75 percent of them occurred at enterprises invested by Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. The number of strikes is rising annually, with 978 cases in 2011, 422 in 2010 and 218 in 2009.

However, a few strikes were organized illegally though 70 percent of them happened at enterprises which had trade unions. Most strikes took place peacefully. There were some strikes which had pertubing elements who incited workers to destroy assets and commit assaults.

According to the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs, strikes broke out because employers did not respect the labor code. Common violations include: employers do not sign labor contracts with workers, do not pay social insurance premium for workers, employers ask workers to do overtime, etc.

Other reasons consist of the lack of discipline of part of workers, the imbalance between labor supply and demand at some industrial zones that make workers not be afraid of losing job when they join strikes.

There is one more reason that makes strikes to be illegal: formalities on strikes are very complicated and they are no longer suitable to the situation.

Deputy General Director of the Vietnam Cement Industry Corporation, Mr. Nguyen Huu Quang, cites the following regulation as an example. To organize a strike, workers at enterprises that have trade unions must have the approval of the trade union and the leaders of production teams.

However, leaders of trade unions at enterprises are people who are paid by the bosses of these enterprises. As a result, it is very difficult to get their approval of strikes. This regulation has been applied since the centrally subsidized period and it has no long to be appropriate to the market economy.

This matter is expected to be solved if the amended Labor Code is being ratified by the National Assembly this May.

According to the Labor Code, strikes must be led by the steering board of the grassroots trade union but so far, grassroots trade unions have not led any strike.

Also under the law, if labor conflicts cannot be solved by the conciliation council and then the provincial council of arbitrators, a strike can be organized and led by the trade union.

However, all over 4,000 strikes in Vietnam since 1995 only passed the first step: being considered of the conciliation council.

The law does not fit the actual situation resulted in workers’ violation of law and they were punished.

In the draft amended Labor Code, only six out of 28 articles on strikes are amended. The trade union says that the law prevents them from organizing strikes but the amended labor law is not amended towards enabling the trade union to lead strikes.

Notably, most of strikes occurred at foreign-invested enterprises when asking for pay and allowance raises and to improve quality of meals.

The reason is the minimum salary set by the government to be very low while most of foreign-invested firms pay salary at the minimum level. It means that they do not violate the law.

Salary of workers at foreign-invested enterprises is even lower than that of their colleagues at local firms. The average salary of workers at local companies was VND4.65 million ($240) per month in 2011 while it was VND4.03 million at foreign-invested firms.

These matters must be solved thoroughly in the amended Labor Code to protect the interest of workers and to reduce strikes.

Source: DNSGCT