FEER - Issue cover-dated Apr 26, 2001 VIETNAM

Trade unions are struggling to attract more members; but to succeed they must do more for workers and less for the Party.

THE WORKLOAD IS MURDER, attests Le Nhat Quang. As head of Vietnam's labour federation in Tan Binh district of Ho Chi Minh City, Quang must supervise trade unions at 307 private companies, both foreign and local, and hustle to set up new unions at hundreds more. Has he ever helped any of his union members lobby for a raise? "The point is not to increase their salary," Quang replies. "The point is to make the workers understand why their salary is low."

Confrontation has never been a tool of Vietnam's trade unions, which report directly to the Communist Party. Unlike their feisty brethren in South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, Vietnamese unions don't paint themselves as worker-advocates pressuring employers for better working conditions. They aim to act as a bridge between boss and worker, to increase productivity, organize social activities and resolve disputes without resorting to strikes. Within the factory-level unions, supervisors and managers routinely call the shots. The paradox is striking: a communist "nation of workers" is burdened with relatively weak trade unions. At the same time Vietnam's transition to a more market-oriented economy increases pressure on unions to change. But it remains doubtful whether the largely complacent union bureaucracy can mould itself into a force more responsive to workers' needs for legal understanding and collective bargaining. However, if the labour federation becomes irrelevant, the party risks losing its grip on the burgeoning private sector, where just 30% of the eligible two million workers are unionized.

For a glimpse of the gulf between workers and unionists, visit a rickety, laundry-laced boarding house in Binh Duong province in the south. Among the workers who sleep five to a room, meet 24-year-old Nguyen, who toils for Tanimex, a state-owned firm with Taiwanese consultants that supplies shoe soles to a Taiwanese company, Jijil Suong. Nguyen complains that he works a daily 12-hour shift but gets paid only 550,000 dong ($38) a month. Other workers wrote to the union requesting raises, he says, but their letters seemed to fall into a black hole.

"I pay 4,000 a month to the union, and I haven't gotten anything back," Nguyen declares. Why doesn't he just elect new union leaders? "I don't know anything about elections. Workers are never allowed to attend those meetings, just senior staff," he replies. A Tanimex spokesman confirms that ordinary workers don't routinely attend union meetings, but says the rest of Nguyen's account is inaccurate. Still, Nguyen won't quit because he fears he'd have to pay a labour recruiter a high fee to find him a new job. He won't go on strike because it's too risky. And he certainly doesn't want to return to his home province up north, where his parents are farmers.

Nguyen envies his friend Hien, a 20-year-old worker at the German lingerie manufacturer Triumph, where there is no union. Hien earns 900,000 dong monthly for a daily eight-hour shift sewing brassieres, allowing her to send 500,000 back to her family each month. She says the job is easier than being a seamstress in her home village. Does she see any need for a union? "If the trade union protects workers' rights, I think we need a trade union, but if it just protects its own rights, I don't think we need a trade union," she says. For the labour federation, counteracting such bad word of mouth is complicated by a catch-22. Under Vietnamese law, workers should take the initiative to set up unions at companies with more than 10 employees. But unless the company allows outside union