Migrant workers bear brunt of crisis in Vietnam

It’s pouring with rain outside. Trung sits in a small room that he shares with four others from his province Nghe An. He has just been in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, for a few days.

He is looking for work in the Di An industrial zone and he’ll take anything he gets, he says – “anything physical – I haven’t learnt anything else.“

In Di An there is one factory after the next – Taiwanese furniture companies and textile companies with English names. Dotted between the factories are settlements of small barracks for the workers.

Trung explains that he came to Ho Chi Minh City because he argued with his father. “I was so angry that I decided to go south and look for work. It’s something personal. We don’t get on very well.“

The 26-year-old wanted to prove that he could cope on his own but the situation is not easy and “people say it’s hard to find a job these days.“

Work is often found through relatives

But not everybody is searching for work. Trung’s cousin Hieu has been in Ho Chi Minh City for over half a year. “When I arrived, I had a cousin working in a noodle factory. I also started working there and have never worked for anybody else,“ she says.

Hieu stuffs spices and chili oil into packs of instant noodles. She works on her feet eight hours a day and does a lot of overtime that she does not complain about. She makes about two million dong a month – some 75 euros. She says she doesn’t need much to live so she sends part of her wages back home to her family and saves the rest.

When she has enough, she wants to go back home to train as a nurse. “I think that way I’ll be able to find better work. My aunt is a nurse and she can help me. It is a stable job. It’s only good to work in a factory so long as you’re young. The older you become, the less you can keep up with the younger ones. I don’t want to have to go back to my village and work in the fields.”

Hard impact of the financial crisis

There are few jobs in the villages, which is why people are flocking to the cities despite the fact that Vietnam, which depends heavily on the export industry, has been hit hard by the global financial crisis and migrant workers in the factories are the first to suffer.

A few blocks away from Trung and Hieu’s lodgings, there is another settlement. The door to the room that Nam shares with his wife and son is open. Six men are sitting around talking – they are all from the province of Dong Thap in the Mekong Delta.

One of them wearing blue overalls explains that they used to work on the same construction site. “I don’t want to say what project it was,” he says, “but we all agreed to stay away from the job. It wasn’t a strike. We just decided not to work there.“

Workers not always paid

A lot is being built around Ho Chi Minh City and there are many opportunities to make money but the wages are low. A worker on a construction site can earn about three to four hundred thousand dong a week – less than 20 euros. But they aren’t always paid and that’s why the men decided to leave.

“We can’t turn to anyone,” says one of them. “The police can’t do anything either.” “The company gives the money to agents who are supposed to give it to the workers but if he does a runner the police can’t do anything. They can’t help us,” another complains.

Often, workers don’t know who they work for and it’s common for agents to run off with the money. There has been an increase of strikes in recent times. They are allowed in Vietnam but only under strict conditions and only when organized by an official trade union.

However, many of them are spontaneous and illegal. The government has started to clamp down on them, arresting activists and handing out harsh sentences.

In these times of financial crisis, many workers have chosen to knuckle down, to try to find whatever work they can even if they are not always paid. They don’t have much choice – in the villages the situation is even worse.

Author: Matthias Boelinger/act
Editor: Thomas Baerthlein