THE STRATEGY OF TRADE UNION REVITALISATION IN VIETNAM A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Bac Phuong Nguyen Master of Management, National Academy of Public Administration, Vietnam Bachelor of Law, University of Law Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam School of Management College of Business RMIT University July, 2016 DECLARATION I certify that except where due acknowledgement has been made, the work is that of the author alone; the work has not been submitted previously, in whole or in part, to qualify for any other academic award; the content of the thesis/project is the result of work which has been carried out since the official commencement date of the approved research program; any editorial work, paid or unpaid, carried out by a third party is acknowledged; and, ethics procedures and guidelines have been followed. Bac Phuong Nguyen 16 July 2016 ii RELATED PUBLICATIONS Papers presented at conferences: Nguyen, B (2016), ‘Trade union revitalisation in Vietnam: building union- management partnership’, proceeding of the 10th Asia-Pacific Business and Humanities Conference, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 22-23 February 2016 Nguyen, B (2014), ‘Trade union commitment in transition: A case study of Vietnam’, paper presented at the Learning from the Greater Sub-Region Mekong: Financial Inclusion, Human Resource Management, Global Education and Sustainability Conference, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 3-5 June 2014 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis has been completed with professional and spiritual assistance from several people. First and foremost, I am especially indebted to my supervisors, Dr Ruth Barton and Professor Martin Wood, for their helpful and expert guidance throughout the course of this study. During my research, they helped me to develop my research skills and design the research plan, and encouraged and inspired me to become a good research scholar.
They were enthusiastic and provided me with practical feedback on my draft chapters. They have been very responsible and dedicated supervisors. I could not have finished this study successfully without their careful supervision and support. I would also like to express my deep and sincere thanks to my fellow doctoral students Hoa Le, Huong Nguyen, Brian, Somo Marano, and Hoa Tran for their sense of humour and sharing in both academic and personal life which made my PhD journey more joyful and myself grounded.
As well I must thank all the people I interviewed and who so generously gave their time and reflections on my research. I also acknowledge the professional editing assistance of Dr Bradley Smith. My deepest and sincerest appreciation goes to my wife Truc Yen, and my kids, Huynh Khoa, and Ngoc An. Although they are in Vietnam, they always stand by me every moment, keeping me in balance and going through with me every up and down moment.
They watched me from a distance while I worked towards my degree in Australia. Without their love, care, support and encouragement, I could not have achieved this pride and success. Finally, I would like to thank my father Liem Nguyen, my mother Huong Tran, and my brother Thuan Nguyen for understanding and supporting me spiritually throughout my PhD journey and my life in general. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION.
ii RELATED PUBLICATIONS. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS .v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. xi LIST OF TABLES. xii LIST OF FIGURES .xiv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .1 Rationale of the research.1 Research objective and research questions.
11 CHAPTER 2 SETTING THE CONTEXT OF VIETNAMESE TRADE UNIONS. 13 Economic reform: Doi Moi or Renovation policy. 13 Trade unions in Vietnam. 15 Trade unions and the National Revolutions.
16 The ideological foundation and model of Vietnamese trade unions. 19 v Relationship between the trade unions and the CPV. 21 Traditional relationship between the trade unions and management. 23 Organisational structure of Vietnamese trade unions.
24 Responsibilities of primary unions and union membership before and after Doi Moi. 29 Challenges for Vietnamese trade unions .33 Trade union responses to Doi Moi. 41 CHAPTER 3 MODELS OF TRADE UNIONS. 44 Concepts of trade unions.
45 Objectives of trade unions. 47 Power sources of trade unions. 51 Varieties of trade union models. 53 Union members’ attitudes towards trade unions and servicing versus organising models of trade unions.
58 What model do Vietnamese trade unions fit into?. 64 CHAPTER 4 STRATEGIES OF TRADE UNION REVITALISATION. 67 Employer’s offensive attitude towards trade unions. 68 Union density decline in advanced industrial and Asian countries.
71 vi The ambiguity of union identity in Eastern Europe and China. 76 Union revitalisation and union renewal: Union strategy. 79 Union revitalisation: Varieties of union strategy. 79 Union renewal: A strategy of encouraging union democracy.
85 Roles of union leadership and union democracy in revitalisation. 93 The hybrid approach. 95 Analytical categories in conceptualising trade union response and trade union strategy. 96 A thematic assessment of union operation.
97 A thematic assessment of strategies of trade union revitalisation. 99 The thematic framework of this research. 104 CHAPTER 5 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. 106 Research strategy: Case study.
108 Semi-structured interviews. 111 Purposeful sampling and data collection units. 113 Data analysis: Thematic analysis. 119 An assessment of research trustworthiness.
128 CHAPTER 6 OPERATION OF PRIMARY TRADE UNIONS. 130 Awareness of union members about relationship between trade unions and management. 130 Membership expectation: Improving working and living conditions. 133 Employers’ attitude towards trade unions.
137 What do union leaders do at the workplace level?. 148 Dual role of union leaders. 148 Attempts in improving employment conditions. 150 The crucial role of union leadership.
152 Membership’s scepticism about roles of union leaders. 157 Union operation at the workplace level. 159 Seeking supports from management and upper union organisations. 159 Focussing on tactics of membership recruitment.
161 Negotiation and avoidance of a direct confrontation with management. 169 CHAPTER 7 TRADE UNION DEMOCRACY IN THE VIETNAMESE CONTEXT. 171 Variety of union activity and membership participation. 172 Indicators of union democracy in Vietnam.
182 Involvement of rank-and-file members in union decision-making. 182 Equality of salary, status, skill and education between union leaders and members. 188 viii Free communication between union leaders and members. 190 The lack of internal organised opposition.
193 Status of union democracy in Vietnam. 198 CHAPTER 8 UNION STRATEGY: CROSSING THE RIVER BY FEELING THE STONES. 200 Responses of individual primary trade unions at workplace level: Retaining the traditional relationship with management. 201 Passivity of members, and union leadership in union operation.
211 Relationship between membership and the trade unions: Servicing model. 214 Assessment of possible strategies of trade union revitalisation: trade union- management relationship strategies. 217 Trade union-management partnership relationship. 222 Features, advantages and disadvantages of union-management relationship strategy in Vietnam.
236 Research question revisited. 239 Research limitation and further study. 250 x LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CPV Communist Party of Vietnam DPE Domestic Private Enterprise FOE Foreign-Owned Enterprise GSO General Statistics Office of Vietnam ILO International Labour Organisation OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development RWGU Red Workers' General Union SOE State-Owned Enterprise TUC Trade Union Congress UK United Kingdom US United States of America VGCL Vietnam General Confederation of Labour xi LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1: Varieties of Vietnamese union goals and functions .1: Capitalist Unions and Communist Union Contrasted .2: Comparing the servicing and organising models .1: Union density in some developed and Asian countries, from 2000-2013 …71 Table 4.2: Strategies of trade union revitalisation in the current literature .1: List of documents used in documentary analysis .2: Focussed categories of observations .3: Organisations and number of participants.4: An example of coding frame .5: Coding frame with extracts .1: Differences between partnership relationship agreement and collective agreement. 23030 xii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: The process of implementation of the CPV’s directives to union operation 22 Figure 2.2: Organisational structure of Vietnamese trade unions in relation to the state agency system and the CPV.3: The progression up the pyramid of trade union conferences .4: The trend of trade union density in Vietnam, 2000-2013 .1: Trade union density in some developed countries, 2000-2013.2: Trade union density in some Asian countries, 2000-2013 .3: The thematic research framework .1: Summarises six phases of thematic analysis employed in this research.2: An extraction of a thematic map.
125 xiii ABSTRACT This thesis explores strategies of trade union revitalisation in Vietnam. Since 1986, Vietnamese trade unions have played an important role as the economy has shifted from being centrally planned to market oriented, known as the Doi Moi or Renovation policy. This research provides empirical knowledge on strategies of trade union revitalisation in Vietnam, as there has been limited research on this topic in the Vietnamese context. Union revitalisation has occurred across many nations over recent decades.
In advanced industrial countries, trade unions have adopted such strategies of union revitalisation as building union-management partnerships, political action, union restructuring, coalition building, and international solidarity. In Asian countries, revitalisation of trade unions encompasses strategies including increases in union autonomy, a renewed emphasis on organising, changes in union structures, alliances between unions and civil society groups, increased member servicing, and internationalisation of union activity. Since Doi Moi, the adoption of strategies for trade union revitalisation in Vietnam appears paradoxical, because it is unclear whether Vietnamese trade unions choose a close relationship between union and management, as is the traditional characteristic of communist trade unions, or choose an adversarial relationship with management, as found in traditional theories on trade unions in advanced industrial economies. Therefore, this raises the question of what are strategies for trade union revitalisation in Vietnam during the Doi Moi era.
The present research addresses the above question with a qualitative approach, by collecting data from semi-structured interviews, unobtrusive observation, and analysis of documents. This research finds that, in Vietnam, the primary trade xiv unions have operated by seeking employers’ support, as well as through negotiation and avoidance of direct confrontation with management. Investigating union members’ attitudes and union democracy, the present research also explored that, in the Vietnamese context, decentralisation with a wide range of membership participation in union decision-making processes, equality between leadership and membership, and free communication, were apparent. However, there has been a lack of organised opposition parties within trade unions in Vietnam, because of intolerance of opposition in communist tenets.
At the workplace level, while the union members appear to have had less involvement in union operations, the union leaders have played important roles in conducting union daily tasks. This passivity or less involvement of union members and active role of union leaders in union operations suggests that the appropriate model of Vietnamese trade unions is the servicing model. From the above findings, this research argues that, in the context of transitional countries such as Vietnam, the strategy of building partnership relationships between trade unions and management is appropriate for trade union revitalisation, because this strategy has been formulated by the tendency for avoidance of direct confrontation with management, the passivity of membership, the active role of union leadership, and the union servicing model. This research advances the literature on trade union revitalisation by proposing a link between the servicing model of trade unions and the partnership strategy of trade union revitalisation, in the context of Vietnam.
This research also suggests that studies on trade union revitalisation and union democracy should concentrate on the passivity of members, which is a crucial aspect in the formulation of union strategy. From this research, recommendations are offered for union activists and academics on strategies for union revitalisation in Vietnam. xv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Rationale of the research The present study explores strategies of Vietnamese trade unions responding to their challenges in economic transition.