Informal workers receive attention

The workshop was organized by the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor on January 15-16. Participating were experts, scientists, and union officials.

Many new points of progress, breakthrough

In his opening speech, Vice President of the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor Ngo Duy Hieu said that after 5 years of implementation, the 2019 Labor Code has created a more open and flexible legal framework, better ensuring the legitimate rights and interests of employees and employers, contributing to promoting the development of the labor market, as a foundation for building harmonious, stable and progressive labor relations.

The 2019 Labor Code takes effect from January 1, 2021 with many new, progressive and breakthrough points, such as: Expanding the scope of application to all employees without labor relations; regulations on labor contracts are built in the direction of increasing flexibility in signing, implementing and terminating labor contracts; enhancing the flexibility and autonomy of parties in labor relations on wages through dialogue and negotiation; being more flexible and harmonious in working hours, rest time and overtime; strengthening protection of female workers on the basis of ensuring gender equality; perfecting regulations on dialogue at the workplace, collective bargaining in the context of having more organizations representing workers; Linh is more active in the mechanism to resolve labor disputes.

In addition to the achieved results, after 5 years of implementation, the current new context raises many issues and requirements that need to be assessed and researched to continue perfecting the 2019 Labor Code. One of them is that currently, our Party and State are promoting the application of science and technology, innovation and digital transformation, striving to achieve the growth target of "2 digits" in the period of 2026 - 2030, bringing the country into a new era. The strong development of science and technology in the coming time will directly affect the workforce and labor relations, change the nature of work, the way of working and managing labor, requiring a more flexible and modern legal framework on labor.

In addition, economic development and international integration are creating major changes, requiring a more equitable approach to workers' rights on salary, bonus, social security, working conditions, etc.

At the workshop, delegates focused on discussing: Assessing labor relations in the context of digital transformation and proposing a legal framework for informal workers; perfecting the mechanism for establishing minimum wages and regulations on wages to ensure a reasonable standard of living, accumulate and improve the resilience of workers;

More effectively protect the rights of workers through perfecting regulations on labor contracts, labor discipline and working hours - rest hours, especially the issue of reducing weekly working hours to less than 48 hours; perfecting policies to promote substantial gender equality and protect female workers in the new situation;

Legal solutions to improve the effectiveness of dialogue activities at the workplace, collective bargaining, signing collective labor agreements; perfect regulations on resolving labor disputes and strikes to suit reality.

The right to collective bargaining and representation of informal labor

Notably, the issue of informal labor was specifically analyzed. According to Mr. Nguyen Huy Khanh - Vice Chairman of the Hanoi City Labor Federation, by 2025, the number of informal workers in Hanoi will be 1.92 million people (an increase of 16.8% compared to the previous year) and account for 51.6% of the total number of employed workers.

Regarding this force, Mr. Khanh analyzed: Informal labor is accounting for a large proportion in the labor market structure, strongly affecting the development and job security in general. However, most of this workforce has low professional qualifications, education or those from rural areas, lacking official job opportunities; the work is mainly concentrated in occupations that are easy to change, unsustainable, unstable, and are not protected by labor law because they do not sign labor contracts.

With such characteristics, most informal workers should not enjoy social security and welfare regimes such as formal workers; the means and working environment of informal workers are only at a basic level; many jobs and jobs still have many potential risks of unsafe labor hygiene.

Informal workers are often in a weak position in negotiations to ensure working conditions as well as opportunities and requirements for increasing income. That leads to the result that many workers in this area have lower income than the regional minimum wage.

From the above basis, the Hanoi City Labor Federation made a number of recommendations that need to be improved in the Labor Code. In particular, expanding the concept of employees in the 2019 Employment Law in the direction that everyone who participates in the labor process to seek legal benefits is considered an employee, which is both consistent with the concept of employees in the Employment Law and covers all employees.

The current regulations of the 2019 Labor Code are narrowing the number of employees in labor relations. Therefore, the City Labor Federation proposes to concept workers as follows: Workers are those who are 15 years old or older, capable of working, participating in or needing to participate in at least one labor activity to seek legal income and benefits, except for some light jobs according to the law, the working age can be under 15 years old. After that, the law can group workers into workers with labor relations, workers without labor relations...

Also giving his opinion on informal labor, Dr. Nhac Phan Linh - Deputy Director of the Institute of Training and fostering cadres and Scientific Research, Deputy Director of the Institute of Strategy and Policy of the Front pointed out the gaps, emphasizing that the gap in collective bargaining rights and representation is the biggest shortcoming in implementing the rights of informal labor.

Informal labor is dispersed and lacks cohesion. The 2019 Labor Code focuses on "Organizing labor representation at enterprises", but lacks a mechanism for freelance unions or professional associations to have the right to negotiate general labor conditions (such as the minimum price framework, fuel support fees).

In addition, the 2019 Labor Code also lacks a dialogue mechanism when there is no regulation requiring informal employers to have a periodic dialogue with this group of workers.

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