Ho Chi Minh City proposes amendment to Labour Code
Ha Noi, May 5 (VNA) -- Ho Chi Minh City experts have recommended amendment or supplementation of 78 issues related to the Labour Code and under-law documents in an effort to ensure the signing of labour contracts for 95 percent of the working people and trade union presence in 80 percent of foreign-invested businesses in the next five years.
The city has managed to get labour contracts for 800,000 working people and social insurance for more than 625,000 workers in the past six years of implementing the Labour Code.
However, long-term contract workers have made up just 20 percent and only more than 70 percent of businesses have signed collective labour contracts. Many problems remain with non-State economic sectors, including a high rate of employers evading or delaying the payment of social insurance, paying low wages, and the absence of trade union organizations, especially in foreign-invested businesses.
Those problems have led to 212 strikes over the last six years, of which 174 took place in private and foreign-invested enterprises, 35 in State-owned enterprises, and three in joint-stock companies.
The services of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs at the district or precinct level in Ho Chi Minh City have recently settled 1,113 petitions and labour disputes. Wages, bonuses, social insurance and working hours were major problems.
The experts blamed those problems on unclear provisions of the Labour Code such as Item 2 of Article 141 on voluntary social insurance and articles on the establishment of supportive funds for the unemployed and vocational training for female workers. They also complained that bureaucracy has made the implementation of Articles 17,38 and 42 on compensations for lay-offs almost impossible.--VNA
