Workers, who feared layoffs earlier this year, now have another issue to face as the economy strengthens. Being expected to clock up to 300 hours per month – the equivalent of ten hours every single day.

 

According to Lam Duy Tin, deputy director of the Dong Nai Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs organisation, many garments and footwear companies have received new orders, which have forced them to organise additional production shifts.

 

In Vietnam the Labour Code stipulates that each company can raise working hours by as much as 200 hours right up to 300 hours in certain fields.

 

Tin says that his department has discovered 20 cases so far this year, where enterprises violate these current laws on overtime working and has imposed fines on the cases. Tin added, however, that many workers, especially immigrant workers, like working overtime to get more money. They may even leave some companies for other companies just because the other company offers overtime work.

 

For the workers, the extra hours and the extra money may be needed too much to turn down.

 

Nguyen Thi Ly, a worker at a sports shoes company in Bien Hoa 2 Industrial Zone in the southern province of Dong Nai, said she has been working overtime regularly over the last two months, as her company has to deliver products on schedule. For Ly it’s a positive outcome and leaves here with more money to cover basic needs and it’s a far cry from the uncertainty of earlier this year.

 

Ngoc, from Quang Ngai province, a garment worker for a company in the same industrial zone, related that the global economic crisis meant a lot of colleagues were laid off.  It also left her unable to earn enough money to return home during the traditional Tet celebrations – an almost unthinkable situation in Vietnam. However, more and more orders have come since the second quarter of the year, which has meant more overtime. “Though I have to work harder, I still feel happy because I can earn more money and I hope I can return to my home village to visit my parents and relatives in the upcoming Tet,” Ngoc said.

 

Where Ngoc works she can earn one-day salary for an additional four-hour production shift as well as a dinner, which she welcomes.  Meanwhile, enterprises in industrial zones in Dong Nai province are complaining that they are seriously lacking workers. One year ago Chinzen in Bien Hoa 1 Industrial zone, could only pay its workers 70 percent of basic salaries. It lead to many workers quitting the company and now the upturn has meant they don’t have enough staff to keep up.

 

Now, when the company has a lot of orders to process, it no longer has enough workers. Elsewhere Pouchen Company has taken on all the 1,000 shoes workers from Lac Cuong Company after it left Bien Hoa as its land-leasing contract expired.