Draft Decree amending and supplementing several in concerning the implementation of regulations at the workplace

The Draft amends several contents related to the implementation of regulations on grassroots democracy at the workplace in a flexible way and simplifies the procedure, providing enterprises decision-making power so as to guarantee its suitability with business conditions.  Specifically:

–Abolishing the provisions for creating a Regular Dialogue Regulation at the workplace and a Regulation for holding an employee conference.  The Draft provides that an enterprise need only create, issue and implement one Grassroots Democracy Regulation at the workplace instead of creating 3 regulations as under the current provisions (which are the Grassroots Democracy Regulation, the Regular Dialogue Regulation, and the Employee Conference Regulation) which are overly burdensome to businesses.  The Grassroots Democracy Regulation at the workplace must receive the opinion of the trade union before issuance.

–Abolishing the duty of creating a grassroots Democracy Regulation at the workplace for enterprises employing fewer than 10 employees.  Accordingly, for these small businesses, depending on the actual conditions of the enterprise, the Draft only requires enterprises to retain and set up several forms of grassroots democracy practices at the workplace in order to promote and efficiently implement the democratic rights of employees.

–Providing guidance for the main contents of the Grassroots Democracy Regulation to assist the enterprise in the creation of its regulation, including: (i) the purpose and requirement; (ii) the contents of the grassroots democracy; (iii) the methods of implementing the grassroots democracy; and (iv) the parties’ responsibilities in the implementation of the grassroots democracy.

–Simplifying the procedure for holding regular dialogues at the workplace, e.g. (i) abolishing the requirement that an employer has to issue a written decision on holding regular dialogues at the workplace after the parties agree on the contents, time, location, and participants, and (ii) abolishing the minimum rate of attendance for members of each party (i.e. two-thirds of each party’s representative members).  Also, the Draft provides that the term for submitting the dialogue contents to the parties to the dialogue shall be 15 days before a regular dialogue takes place.

–Simplifying the procedures for holding employee conferences by allowing enterprises to choose the time and method of holding employee conferences (i.e. a collective conference or a delegate conference), procedural rules, number of delegates, methods of voting (in the case of a delegate conference) and provisions in the Grassroots Democracy Regulation at the workplace of the enterprise.

The Draft also abolishes the delegates’ responsibility for disseminating the result and decision of the conference to employees who did not attend the conference.  Namely, the employees from the offices, factories, or groups of production that voted for the delegate to attend the conference.

The Draft adds “salary and income reporting” and “awarding the individuals and collectives with outstanding results in business and production” into the contents of employee conferences.

–As for information which employers are required to publicize, as stipulated in Article 6, Decree No.60/2013/ND-CP, the Draft provides that (i) employers shall publicize “targets and missions of the business and production” of enterprises, workshops, production teams and groups, which will replace publication of “production and business plans” as in recent regulations, and (ii) the provision for “publicizing an enterprise’s annual financial information with contents relating to employees” will be abolished.

–The Draft abolishes such provisions as stipulated in Article 9, Decree No.60/2013/ND-CP, that allows employees to examine and supervise the implementation of production and business plans of enterprises, divisions, departments, workshops, production teams and groups.

This insight is quoted from the Vietnam Labor Law Review (April – May 2018), you can download and read the full file of Vietnam Labor Law Review (April – May 2018) here.

Author: Stephen Le 

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