on the development of harmonious, stable, and progressive labor relations with enterprises
CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF VIETNAM
No :22-CT/TW
Hanoi, 05 June 2008
DIRECTIVE OF THE SECRETARIAT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE on enhancing the leadership and providing direction for the development of harmonious, stable and progressive labor relations within enterprises
Enforcing the reform policy of the Communist Party, over the past years, our economy has sustained its high growth; domestic and foreign investment have grown rapidly; economic and labor structures have shifted in a positive direction, creating millions of new jobs annually; income and welfare of workers in enterprises have been improved; good labor relations gradually developed in enterprises, a large number of models, enterprises with good labor-management relations emerged.
The above-mentioned achievements were attributed to the following factors: the socialist-oriented market economic mechanism has been gradually completed; the state management of investment and labor has positively developed; many labor unions within enterprises of various kinds have become representatives for workers, protecting workers’ legitimate rights and making contributions to enterprises’ production and business stability and development.
However, labor-management disputes resulting in strikes without following legal due process, recently, tends to increase with larger scale, impacting on social order and safety and investment environment, causing loss for workers, enterprises and the whole economy. The reason of the abovementioned situation is that employers haven’t yet fully observed the legal labor regulations and paid appropriate attention to workers’ legitimate rights and interests; the material and cultural lives of workers in many industrial parks and export processing zones haven’t been ensured; the state management of labor has been inadequate; labor unions haven’t been established in many non-state enterprises yet or if they have existed, their operations are ineffective and fail to represent workers’ legitimate rights and interests; in most of non-state enterprises there haven’t been the party’s and the youth union’s chapters to lead, gather, mobilize and educate workers yet; majority of workers are stemmed from rural areas, so their knowledge and awareness of the labor law and policy have been still limited; the labor demand-supply relations have been imbalanced.
To solve the abovementioned situation, making contributions to stabilizing the investment environment, ensuring the sustainable economic development; enhancing social progress and equity; developing harmonious, stable and progressive labor relations within enterprises, the Secretariat of the Central Committee requires party’s committees and organizations at all levels concentrate their leadership and instructions on doing the following key tasks:
1. Execute urgently the Central Committee’s Resolution No 6 (tenure X) on further developing the Vietnamese working class in the accelerating period of national industrialization and modernization; to work out training programs and plans in order to improve workers’ professional and technical skills and awareness of respecting laws; to improve workers’ material and cultural lives; to complete salary and social and health insurance policies; to attach industrial and export processing zone planning to residential zoning; to have solution for housing and social infrastructure development in order to improve the workers’ life.
2. To sum up the implementation of Directive 07-CT/TW dated 23rd November 1996 of the Politburo on enhancing the development of the Party and people’s organizations within private and enterprises with foreign invested capital; to review what has and hasn’t been done, drawing experiences and learning from effectively organizing models of party grassroots within enterprises in order to multiply them in other enterprises; to raise the awareness and responsibility of industries and state agencies at all levels and to direct resolutely the establishment and operation of party grassroots and other socio-political organizations in enterprises.
3. Provincial and municipal party’s committees shall instruct the preliminary summing-up of the implementation of Directive 06/2006/CT-TTg dated 6th March 2006 of the Prime Minister on enhancing the observance of labor law; accurately identify the legal responsibilities of local governments at all levels for workers’ strikes which didn’t follow the legally due process in their areas in order to work out practical methods for upcoming continued instruction with a view to reducing labor disputes.
4. To continue completing the labor policy and legal system and introduce them into every enterprise and worker for their implementation; to increase the quantity and quality of labor investigating teams in order to enhance the investigation work and stricter punishment of violations of labor laws within enterprises; to complete policy and mechanism for the labor market to develop healthily while ensuring the balance of the labor supply-demand relations among industries, regions, urban and rural areas, and skill structure.
5. To further accomplishment of legal framework and creation of good environment in which employers’ representatives, business associations and occupational associations could effectively operate to support enterprises in observing the laws and policies relating to labor, to raise the responsibility of employers in taking care of their employees’ interests, material and cultural lives, to implement the Tripartite Partnership mechanism in labor relations at industrial and local levels, to accelerate the conclusion of labor collective bargaining agreement at industrial and regional levels.
6. Party’s and Youth Union Committees at the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor shall work out particular plans to reinforce, develop and renovate the operation mechanism of labor unions in enterprises, so they could become actual representatives to protect workers’ legitimate rights and interests; develop healthy labor relations in the spirit of cooperation and harmony between the interests of investors, workers and the State; research and suggest adequate policies on training, education and remuneration applied to labor unions’ officials in enterprises.
The Central Committee of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union shall instruct the construction and development of operational models for youth union chapters in non-state enterprises in order to gather, disseminate information to, encourage and educate workers about the guidelines of the Party and the government’s policy and law.
The Central Committee of the Vietnamese Women Union, in close collaboration with the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor, shall improve the effectiveness of the women’s activities within labor unions in enterprises and industrial parks.
7. Mass media organizations shall play an active role in disseminating the standpoints and policies of the Party on economic integration and investment attraction to reflect what have and haven’t been done accurately and objectively, to avoid the dissemination of one-way information which could cause a negative impact on labor relations and public opinions.
8. Party’s committees and organizations at all levels shall work out appropriate ways to grasp thoroughly and disseminate the content of this Directive through the whole political system; consider the point of developing harmonious, stable and progressive labor relations within enterprises as an urgent and long-term task for the purpose of achieving political and social stability, increased investment attraction, economic development, job creation, gradual improvement of workers’ material and cultural lives.
Party’s daily affairs boards, youth unions, industries, central organizations, party’s committees and governments at all levels shall take the responsibility of ensuring the implementation of this Directive. The Party Central Committee’s Office taking the lead role, in coordination with the party chapter at the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Welfare, the party and youth union chapters at the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor, and the party and youth union chapters at the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, shall assume the responsibility of monitoring, guiding, checking and supervising the implementation of this Directive and making periodic report to the Secretariat of the Central Committee.
ON BEHALF OF THE SECRETARIAT
/(signed and sealed)/
Trương Tấn Sang
Member of the Politburo of the Vietnamese Communist Party, standing member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee