The following is reprinted with permission from The Associated Press. © Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Workers Speak Up in Vietnam
By Ian Stewart
June 22, 1997CU CHI, Vietnam (AP) -- 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 up 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 while 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.''
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, underscores an awkward rift that begs the Communist Party's authority and mandate.
``This is not only a country that needs foreign investment,'' said Binh, ``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. When North Vietnam in the 1950s proclaimed itself a communist republic, 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. Yet more and more workers feel reduced to cogs in a machine directed by foreign money and Vietnamese partners. Less 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, some 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.
Last month, 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.
Nike says it has intervened and now insists labor relations are on the mend in its factories -- all of which are closed to journalists except by guided tour with 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 capital, Hanoi, and the port city of Haiphong. 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 a deafening hum. Inside, ceiling fans whirl in a futile effort to cut the suffocating heat. The summer sun shining down on the factory's corrugated metal roof can send the temperature inside soaring to nearly 100 degrees.
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, concedes 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. Employee complaints center more on working conditions.
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 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. With the Soviet collapse in 1991, An Lac was left holding 70,000 unsold uppers.
Foreign investment from Taiwan and South Korea in the mid-1990s saved the factory with orders from major shoe companies from around the world. ``Since foreign employers came to Vietnam they have offered more jobs,'' Thanh, the Sam Yang worker, conceded. ``But they are also bringing problems.''
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