CORRESPONDENCE - 85A COMBINED REPORTS OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN VIETNAM 2012

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Thi Ngoc Lan, General Deputy Director of Vietnam Administration for Preventive. Medicine and Environment, Ministry of Health, each year, there are 1600 -1700 deaths due to work - related accidents. The number of people who suffer severe accidents and need long -term treatment is 20 times the number of deaths (approximately 34,000 people); the number of slightly injured workers treated 1 day or more is 50 times the number of deaths (equivalent to 95,000). This figure is roughly 15 times more than the reports from the Ministry of Labor - Invalids and Social Affairs i' To increase the workers' purchasing power, the government has raised the minimum wage four times since 2008, the last one in October 2011. Nevertheless, a recent research by Vietnam General Confederation of Labor's Institute of Workers and Trade Union disclosed that the new minimum wage — from 1,4 to 2 million longs (VN$) depending on localities, equaling US$ 70- 100 — could only meet 56.7% to 65.7% of the workers' minimal needs,18 while the social gap between the rich and the poor kept widening. Together with the galloping inflation and devaluation of the Vietnamese currency, this gap becomes wider and results in an explosion of strikes. A remarkable point is that all strikes in Vietnam are self initiated, mostly occurring in orderly fashion and without violence. The firms' labor unions generally side with the bosses to oppose the workers' legitimate demands, typically the largest strike of the year took place from June 21 -29, " Dan Viet, "Tai nan lao dong cao gap nhieu Ian bao cao," http: / /danviet.vn /77455pl c24 /tai - nan -lao- dong -cao- gap - nhieu- Ian - bao - cao.htm (accessed 23 Feb 2012) '$ Vietnam Investment Review, "Workers' income far below cost of living ", http: / /www.vi r. com. vn /news /cove rage /workers- income - far - below- cost- of- living.html (accessed 29 Dec 2011) Vietnam Human Rights Network * Annual Report 2011 participated by over sixty thousand workers at the shoe factory Pou Yuen, owned by a Taiwanese capitalist. During the eight days of the strike, not a word was heard from labor union and party officials, who had links of interest with the firm's boss. Yet, about 20 workers were arrested by the police. Theoretically, the 1994 Labor Law authorizes "the workers to strike in accordance with the laws," (Article 4, Section 7). Meanwhile, the Trade Union Law only permits strikes through the state labor unions (Article 2, Section 11). This means that the workers themselves cannot strike, a consequence of the legal confusion that attempts to rob the workers of their right to strike or worse, to outlaw it. Supplementary documents attached to the Labor Law, moreover, plan to criminally punish those who "incite, draw, or force" workers to go on strike, creating more restrictions for "illegal" strikes. On 4 January 2011, a Memo No. 930 /LDTBXH- LDTL was sent by the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs to Chairmen of provincial and city people's committees requesting them to strengthen their preventive measures against labor conflicts. 2. Labor Unions — A State Monopoly Although the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor currently has more than 7 million members in 105,000 grassroots unions, but legally and in reality, this organization is merely a state product controlled by the CPV leaders. The Trade Union Law of 1990 clearly stipulates that labor union is a workers' class organization ,'voluntarily formed under the CPV leadership" (Article 1); yet, the organization and activities of unions at factories are all actually directed and controlled by grassroots CPV officials acting as political agents whose duty is to carry out the CPV 22