A new Ordinance on Strikes is to be adopted by the National Assembly (NA) Standing Committee by the end of this year. Sai Gon Giai Phong (Liberated Sai Gon) had an interview with Mrs. Nguyen Thi Hoai Thu, chairwoman of the NA Committee for Social Affairs on this issue. Vietnam Law & Legal Forum hereby introduces the excerpts of this interview
Q: Could you explain why until now can we adjust the Ordinance on Procedures for the Settlement of Labor Disputes to formulate a new ordinance on strikes?
A: When drafting the Ordinance on Procedures for the Settlement of Labor Disputes, lawmakers thought that its contents were strict enough to help restrict strikes. However, the 8-year implementa-tion of this Ordinance shows that it still contains many inadequacies and is no longer suitable to the actual labor relations within enterprises, as clearly seen in the increasing and complicated strikes over the past three years.
Q: Could you specify some inadequacies?
A: The biggest one lies in the procedures for organization and settlement of strikes, which attach importance to the maintenance of the management order rather than the exercise of the laborers’ right to strike. Under the current Ordinance, to organize a strike strictly according to the prescribed order, laborers have to wait around 17 days for the grassroots mediation council or district labor mediator to mediate the dispute. If failing to settle it, they must transfer the dossier to the municipal Arbitration Council. Only when laborers disagree with the dispute settlement by this Council, can they go on strike or initiate a lawsuit. The dossier processing and trial preparation by the court alone takes 6 days, not to mention the complicated and infeasible procedures for collection of sufficient documents and the consents of at least half of the labor collective to go on strike. Such procedural process discourages laborers and explains why they often go on wildcat strike without advance notices and why they consider it the only and the final solution to protecting their interests. Actually, all 700 strikes having taken place throughout the country over the past 10 years were unlawful and incompliant with the prescribed order and procedures. Besides, the current Ordinance has no clear interpretation of a number of terms, including those on labor collective, collective labor dispute, slowdown (lan cong), strike, lawful strike and unlawful strike…
Q: The strikes were unlawful also because they were not organized, guided and led by the Trade Union?
A: This is law-binding. In fact, not few strikes occurred at places where grassroots trade union organizations were paralyzed or were not yet established.
Q: In reality, many laborers are aware of law provisions but still ignore them. They thought that as soon as they go on strike, their demands would have been met since the labor users were afraid of the late delivery of goods to their partners and the damage of their prestige. Do you think the new Ordinance can help change this situation?
A: The new Ordinance would help laborers use the right-to-strike “weapon” lawfully in order to protect their legitimate interests and contribute to maintaining social order and safety as well as stabilizing the investment environment.
Q: Could you name some bases?
A: The NA Committee for Social Affairs has recently organized two symposiums to collect various branches’, services’ and mass organizations’ comments on the new Ordinance. The comments focused on determination of the scope of strike based on the domain of operation of enterprises. Laborers, whoever they are and whatever enterprises they belong to, except enterprises on the list of those banned from strike, have the right to go on strike if such strike does not affect the national security and public interests. The new provisions on examination of the lawfulness of strikes should cover the contents of disputes rather than only the order and procedures for strikes as the current ones. Laborers won’t need to collect enough signatures representing 50% of the labor collective or organize voting for organization of a strike. The time and order of dispute settlement should also be shortened along the direction of elimination of grassroots mediation councils. If such councils still exist, they shall settle personal disputes only. Many NA deputies deem that this process is more reasonable and may minimize wildcat strikes.
Q: So, the Trade Union and State management agency in charge of labor shall have the competence to settle collective labor disputes and strikes?
A: We think so. At present, the Trade Union and State management agency in charge of labor have no competence to settle strikes, but only the competence to send documents to courts, requesting the latter to examine the lawfulness of strikes. In fact, these two agencies are always the first to come to hot spots and coordinate with one another in resolutely settling strikes.
Q: What is the situation at enterprises without grassroots Trade Union organizations? Do their laborers have the right to strike?
A: Of course they have, because this is one of the fundamental rights of laborers in the market economy, which is provided for in the Labor Code and labor conventions which Vietnam has acceded to. In this case, the local Trade Union organizations shall appoint their representatives at enterprises to help laborers exercise their right to strike.-