Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Mocci, Nicola

Titel

Vietnam 2019: Pursuing harmonious labour relations and consolidating its reliable international role

Ist Teil von

• Asia Maior, 2019-01, Vol.XXX

Ort / Verlag

Rome: Viella Libreria Editrice

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• [...]I would like to thank all the Vietnamese who, during my fieldwork in Vietnam, with their advice and suggestions helped me to formulate the theses set out in this article. In particular, according to Deprez, the Vietnamese Vision aims to place its economic system at the end of the global-value chain production, strengthening the «outward-looking» trade integration and, consequently, achieving the status of a high-income economy.3 In other terms, the ambitions of this Vision is to create conditions to reach fully integrated industrialisation where high value-added products may be realised along with the low value added. [...]engaging at the end of the global-value chain production is not a process that naturally springs only from the strengthening of market integration. In several articles, Adam Fforde reported this phenomenon, showing that the Vietnamese development model failed a full-scale industrialisation and determined a fast growth in the services sector (servicisation).11 Consequently, according to Fforde, the export-oriented industrialisation model is not a «core active development driver».12 According to World Bank data, in 2018 manufacture value added was 16% of GDP, while services value added reached 41.1%, and employed 34.7% of the total workforce.13 Moreover, as Fforde has shown, it should be taken into account that not only in Vetnam but in many developing countries servicization is a strong development driver.14 Limiting the focus on labour issues, the Vietnamese manufacturing hub has provoked different structural social changes like the semi-proletarianisation and circulatory migration in transition from agriculture to industry,15 and the progressively precariousness and informalisation of workers.16 Research on industrial parks has underlined a series of criticalities related to stressful working conditions: widespread use of short-term contracts (unlawfully used even for long-term workers), permanent positions systematically turned into «short-term» ones, high degree of self-exploitation to keep the job (and have access to permanent positions), job and decent wage granted only to the physically strongest/most disciplined workers.17 In 2019, these aspects were subject matters for discussion in Vietnam, following the long process of ratification of the fundamental conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the issuing of the new labour code. [...]some important events of 2019, such as the meeting in Hanoi in February between Trump and Kim Yong Un, or the long debate on social legislation, must be interpreted in this perspective.