500,000 Vietnamese footwear workers face redundancy due to anti-dumping

The anti-dumping duties the European Union (EU) has recently imposed on Vietnamese leather-upper shoes have put half a million of direct workers in the local footwear industry and a large number of employees in related industries in the danger of losing jobs, an organization said in Hanoi Monday.

"A decision of the provisional anti-dumping duties that could not change the weak situation of the EU producers but entirely make hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese workers unemployed is unacceptable," Phan Van Ngoc, country director of ActionAid Vietnam, was quoted in a press release by the non-governmental organization.

ActionAid Vietnam has recently conducted a study on impacts of the duties on employees in 21 footwear enterprises in seven northern and southern localities of Vietnam.

Such impacts are even more serious as income of footwear workers is low and each worker must support 2-3 members of their families, the release said, noting that when the workers face with the risk of unemployment, it will result in many other social problems such as no future for young workers, no money for their children to go to school and financial difficulties for their families.

The ActionAid Vietnam and the Vietnam Leather and Footwear Association have appealed the European Commission (EC) to reconsider its decision on imposition of the anti-dumping duties, which directly affects the life of nearly one million of workers in the local shoe industry and related ones.

The EC has decided that the anti-dumping duty on Vietnamese leather-upper shoes exported to the European Union (EU) was 4.2 percent from April 7, and 8.4 percent from June 2. Under the EC's decision, the provisional anti-dumping duties are to be phased in over six months, beginning at 4.2 percent, and finally reaching 16. 8 percent.

Last year, Vietnam earned 2.1 billion euros (over 2.6 billion U. S. dollars) from exporting footwear products to the EU, said the release.

Source: Xinhua