“Second only to demands for higher wages are workers’ insistence that employers treat them humanely. […] One supervisor in a Ha Noi factory owned by Canon, Inc., after turning down two workers’ request to take time off for personal reasons, made sure the women did not leave by tying their legs to their work stations.”—
“Workers’ Protests in Contemporary Vietnam,” by Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet
The opportunity has arisen for LaborVoices to do some work in Vietnam. So, during the July-September pilot, I may be making a quick trip there to scope things out. Of course, working in Vietnam means working very closely with the Vietnamese government. I expect one of our biggest challenges (beyond getting permission to operate) will be making it crystal clear to workers how much monitoring and filtering the government will likely be putting on the system. At the end of the day, I’m not sure how LaborVoices-Vietnam will be able to interface with the broader LaborVoices system. Of paramount importance is ensuring that participating workers know what they’re getting into, and to avoid endangering them any further. Any ideas on how to work in Vietnam, or how to firewall or harmonize between heavily-surveilled and -censored systems and secure, non-censored ones?
Any other ideas on next countries LaborVoices should target, after the India pilot? Partners we should work with?