Do Vietnamese workers have RIGHTS? Labor Law in Vietnam! - Luna Oi!

Oh my god, Luna Oi is such a propaganda machine for the Vietnamese government, and I say this from the perspective of a Vietnamese leftist.

Well, to be fair, I'm not good at law, but I think anyone with half a brain could see that the law is only good for workers when it could be realistically enforced. Yes, Vietnamese workers have rights, lots of them, but it would be ridiculous to say that words on legal papers alone could arm workers with a powerful arsenal of arguments and resources to fight for their rights. We have to keep in mind the sheer imbalance of power between the workers and the capitalists at all times, since when workers appeal their case to the court, most of them cannot afford the money to hire a good lawyer while the capitalists have legions of legal consultants and lawyers backing them up. It's not uncommon for a worker to represent themselves, and no, Vietnam does not have any system to assign a mandatory public defender for destitute people, which reduces the possibility of workers winning a case drastically. Even if they manage to bring the case to the court collectively, the procedure is still very lengthy and complicated and the cost of going through them is money and time, which most workers don't have. They barely get by with the wages and benefits of the company, asking them to suck it up for a prolonged legal battle that could very well last for 2 years is downright unreasonable.

Strike is another story altogether. Luna said that strikes require permission from the labor union and this is very true. However, let's stop for a second and really think about the fact that workers need permission to strike in the first place, doesn't that sound ridiculous? Why would they have to entrust the right to strike to another body of authority? What if they decided to refuse? The workers should just drop the case and go back to work peacefully then? You might say that the union will not refuse because it's a democratic institution and has to follow the will of the masses. However, in order for that argument to work, labor union have to be independent institution without the influence of both company leadership AND the state, because if the leading party decide to adopt a neoliberal policy, they would have every incentive in the world to mess with the democracy of the labor union and what could be the easier way to do it than subduing all unions under the control of the state? Yes, I'm saying this because all unions in Vietnam belong to the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour, an organ of the Vietnamese Communist Party whose current interest is to develop the economy by accumulating capitalistic wealth, not to protect worker's interests. This makes Vietnamese labor unions very prone to corruption and backstage vote rigging. There's no guarantee that a labor union could really present the interest of the worker. In Vietnam, the union's practical role is not to reel up workers to fight the factoríe, but to extinguish the intensity of their struggle so that Vietnam doesn't become a place that foreign investors would actively avoid.

Luna said something very interesting: most strikes are illegal because Vietnamese workers don't bother to ask for permission, which is debatable. Why doesn't she consider that there is a very real possibility that most strikes are actively declined by the union leaders? Vietnamese workers have been striking since Doi Moi and established a labor struggle history of their own, there must be more structural reasons why wildcat strikes are preferable than just their individual failings to be more knowledgeable about labor law. In fact, the laws are actively making it very difficult for the workers to strike. Aside from asking for permission, they would have to make sure that they are asking for benefits, not rights, striking for rights is illegal, and good luck differentiating the two because the Labor Code doesn't do that for you. Before they could ask for permission to strike, workers must negotiate with their employers in a process called meditation. The employers could sit on their asses for 30 days without going to the negotiation session to prolong the battle with the employees. And like I said earlier, time is of the essence because they have to accept not having any money to live during the entire process.

We have to address the elephant in the room too: Workers in a lot of capitalist countries also have rights, sometimes even more rights than their Vietnamese counterparts. Labor laws in Germany, Finland or more progressive states in America are way more comprehensive and the mechanism through which workers's rights are protected in those countries is way more developed. Vietnamese workers have suffered a lot and it's so disingenuous on Luna's part to present her video in a way that frames American laborers are way more miserable than us. I could not overstate how wrong this is enough when workers in factories throughout Vietnam, especially in special economic zones, have to live through abject working conditions but can not quit their jobs or protest about it. The power dynamic is heavily skewed towards the capitalists because the government is kissing their feet or inviting them to destroy our land. There is a reason why Vietnam is an attractive place for foreign investors and it's absolutely not communism. Vietnam is not a socialist paradise, but just another victim of neo-colonialism like the rest of the Global South.

@Five, I really respect your effort to maintain the vitality of many progressive communities on Lemmy, but you can noy promote Luna Oi if you also support anarchism. The narratives she pumps out are very harmful for the left because her videos are purely dogmatic propaganda that promotes a vision of socialism based on an opressive, authoritarian regime. Vietnam is a capitalist, authoritarian country that have attempted multiple times to attack progressive movements by framing them as reactionary.