Vietnam reports more strikes

Vietnam had 560 strikes from January 2004 to mid-June 2006, with over 200 occurring in 2005, a high number compared with only 60 strikes in 1995, local media reported Monday.

Of the 560 strikes, 409 happened at foreign-invested companies, 138 at non-state firms, and 13 at state-owned enterprises, mainly because employers have not obeyed the Labor Code, especially regulations about salary, bonus, social insurance and working conditions, New Hanoi newspaper said.

Another contributing factor is weak performance of trade unions at enterprises. Most of the strikes happened in an orderly and peaceful manner, but in few strikes, workers vandalized their firms' assets.

Over half of enterprises in Vietnam's industrial parks (IPs) and export processing zones (EPZs) do not pay salary to women workers on maternity leave, and 25 percent of the firms refuse to pay employees for their overtime work, Pioneer newspaper reported.

Only two percent of nearly one million direct workers and 1.5 million indirect ones in IPs and EPZs nationwide live in accommodations provided by their employers and relevant organizations. Others have to rent makeshift houses and inns built by local residents.

By the end of 2005, there were 130 IPs and EPZs with total land areas of 26,517 hectares in 45 cities and provinces of Vietnam, which lured 2,202 foreign-invested projects worth 17.5 billion U.S. dollars and 2,314 domestic projects with combined registered capital of 103 trillion Vietnamese dong (nearly 6.5 billion dollars).

Source: Xinhua