The treaty as concluded at the summit meeting, 23–25 February, covered the “machinery”. The preamble alluded inter alia to the desire “to enhance peace, friendship and mutual cooperation”, consistent with the UN Charter, the ten principles of Bandung, the Bangkok declaration of 1967, and the Kuala Lumpur declaration of 1971. Article 1 declared that the object was to promote peace, amity and cooperation, and Article 2 that the parties would be guided by the principles of “a. Mutual respect for the independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity and national identity of all nations; b. The right of every State to lead its national existence free from external interference, subversion or coercion; c. Non-interference in the internal affairs of one another; d. Settlement of differences or disputes by peaceful means; e. Renunciation of the threat or use of force; f. Effective cooperation among themselves.”

The parties agreed to promote mutual understanding and cooperation, and to collaborate (Article 6) “for the acceleration of the economic growth of the region in order to strengthen the foundation for a prosperous and peaceful community of nations in Southeast Asia”. The parties were “to strengthen their respective national resilience in their political, economic, socio-cultural as well as security fields in conformity with their respective ideals and aspirations, free from external interference as well as internal subversive activities in order to preserve their respective national identities” (Article 11). They were also to “cooperate in all fields for the promotion of regional resilience, based on the principles of self-confidence, self-reliance, mutual respect, cooperation and solidarity” (Article 12).

Articles 13–17 covered the pacific settlement of disputes. Article 13 required the parties to have “the determination and good faith to prevent disputes from arising”. If they did, they were to refrain from force or the threat of force and to settle the disputes through friendly negotiations. “To settle disputes through regional processes”, Article 14 prescribed the setting up of a High Council, a continuing body comprising a representative of each of the parties to the treaty, “to take cognizance of the existence of disputes or situations likely to disturb regional peace and harmony”.

The literature on ASEAN is, as it should be, very sub-stantial. It is significant for the fate of states and peoples in Southeast Asia and beyond. It has been both conservative and inventive, developing in ways its creators could not have foreseen, deploying the style and instruments of their diplomacy in novel ways, but without abandoning their essential objective, to limit disputes among themselves and the intervention of states external to the region. This short work can make but a small addition to the literature. But it has suggested that — with the aid indeed of documents drawn from the archives of external powers — it may be possible to study the early years of ASEAN in more detail. That will interest historians, but it may be important to others, too. Words of the great English novelist who called herself George Eliot come to mind.

The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) claims to be still running a socialistoriented political system, and continues to cite the state economy as a key sector in the country's development. There has been an ongoing debate between the more socialist-oriented wing of the party, which advocates retaining significant state ownership throughout the economy, and the more market-oriented wing, which wants majority state ownership only in areas such finance and infrastructure while leaving the rest to the private sector. By examining one aspect of the state sector that can be considered an essential element of the CPV's “socialist orientation” — worker participation in management — this chapters seeks to interpret this debate.

In line with Leninist ideology, the CPV officially claims that workers must become “masters in social production”. However, as in other communist regimes that have diverged from their democratic ideals, making Vietnamese workers complete “masters” seems to be an impossible goal. In the pre-reform era, one may be led to assume that, like the Soviet and Chinese models it outwardly resembles, the Vietnamese state was totalitarian and thus had complete control over society, state enterprises, and workers alike. It could also be argued that workers have lost more ground since Doi Moi because of the autonomy granted to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which has lent itself to greater control by management, i.e., the enterprise level of the party–state. According to this argument, as participants in a market economy, SOE management would tend to exploit workers in the same vein as capitalists; in the process, workers have become “commodities” (see, for instance, Greenfield 1994, pp. 207–8).

However, I argue here that Vietnamese workers were never totally controlled before the reform era, nor have they now been turned into commodities. While the party and state retain extensive powers of repression, their legitimacy partly rests on some degree of accommodation to popular pressure from workers and peasants, an inheritance of their revolutionary origins (see Beresford and Dang 1998, p. 12; Ngo Vin Long in Tsang 2002, p. 460).

More than thirteen years have passed since the 1996 media exposé of the sweatshop working conditions endured by Honduran workers assembling clothes for Kathie Lee Gifford's brand led to federal-level investigations of sweatshop abuses in the United States, as well as elsewhere around the world. This media exposure prompted non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and ethical consumers to criticize brand name corporate buyers more aggressively, giving rise to the need for social reporting of working conditions. The ensuing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives in turn have led to a proliferation of codes of conduct (CoCs) and monitoring schemes to help inform consumers on whether the goods that they buy have been produced under exploitative conditions. There are also, of course, many CSR-like initiatives dating back to the 1970s, which include philanthropy and ethical investment. This chapter focuses on labour standards compliance, the problems in implementing them, and their effects on workers on the factory floor.

The CSR initiative gained further legitimacy at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 1999, when UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged multinational corporations (MNCs) to voluntarily incorporate the nine principles established by Global Compact, a UN body established by Annan himself to set standards on human rights, labour, and the environment for the international business community. These initiatives focus attention on the global manufacturing supply chain's multi-level subcontracting practices and the resulting difficulty of monitoring labour standards at subcontractors' production sites in the developing world.

This chapter examines what the introduction of CSR to Vietnam in 2000 meant for the global supply chain and the actions and interactions of the stakeholders. By stakeholders, I mean those who have a stake in their interests, rights, and entitlements in the CSR context. From the Vietnamese side they include workers, The Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL), the labour press, the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), local state officials, and the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI). The global actors include institutions such as the World Bank, the International Labour Organization (ILO), MNCs, international NGOs, and foreign subcontractors.

It has been three decades since Vietnam began to liberalize its planned economy and two-and-a-half decades since the policy of Doi Moi (renovation) was officially introduced. Today, alongside China, Vietnam is an “economic miracle” — a Communist Party-led state that has successfully transformed its economy and whose export industry is internationally competitive. With an average GDP growth rate of almost 7 per cent over this entire period of transformation, Vietnam is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. It has become an attractive destination for foreign direct investment (FDI) in good part because Vietnamese labour is considered “cheap”, at about half the wage level of China.

Rapid urbanization and industrialization could not take place in Vietnam without a growing industrial labour force, and it is this new “proletariat” under Doi Moi that is the subject of this volume. “Proletariat” is used here as a reminder that Vietnam still calls itself a socialist state, and it is within this context that this Introduction is situated. As will be seen, in the view of one of the contributors, Michael Karadjis, for the time being Vietnam's state-sector workers are still in a halfway house.

VIETNAM AND THE ASIAN MARKET-SOCIALISM DEVELOPMENT MODEL

In the early 1990s, shortly after the collapse of the communist one-party regimes of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the question arose as to what would occur in the last two remaining socialist countries that counted — Vietnam and China. By then, both countries were embarking on the road to “market socialism”. Where would their political, economic, and social transformation lead them? Would they be able to succeed in their “latecomer” development projects (see Woodside 1999)?

Twenty years on, these two states have jumped the hurdle of late development and have been able to catch up on lost time. Still using fiveyear plans, but minus the hitherto authoritarian and rigid top-down methods of implementation, they have succeeded in transforming themselves from the status of poor Third World countries into what are today known as newly emerging economies.

In 1948, Gilbert Jouan, a French colonial customs officer with twenty years' experience in Indochina and an abiding faith that trade unions would form a bulwark against Communist intrusion, took the first tentative steps toward organizing Vietnamese workers. Working with the French Confederation of Christian Workers (CFTC), Jouan and other Catholic trade unionists in 1947 formed a “delegation” representing CFTC interests in Vietnam, and notified French authorities of his intention to organize “an authentic Christian trade union in Indochina … for the Indochinese themselves”.

Strictly speaking, Jouan's actions violated the law. Trade unions, explained one colonial official in 1948, had “absolutely no legal standing; groups such as these are merely tolerated by public officials”. Still, the French invested great hope in Jouan's work. An official report on Christian trade union organizing described Jouan as “worthy of our esteem”. The colonial government even arranged time off from the customs office for Jouan so that he could focus on the organizing work that officials obviously hoped would counterbalance the appeal of the Viet Minh. “The consolidation of the support of the working class in Vietnam is mainly to be achieved by close collaboration with the Christian Trade Union”, explained the Vietnamese Minister of Social Action. The result was an awkward modus vivendi between the nascent, still-illegal labour organization and the colonial state.

Within a few years, Jouan's Christian labour movement grew in numbers and clout, and eventually took the name the Confédération Vietnamienne du Travail Chrétien (Vietnamese Confederation of Christian Workers, known best by its French acronym, CVTC). The organization had far-reaching ambitions — to be an activist and independent voice for the oppressed workers of Vietnam. Its survival for the next two-and-a-half decades remains a testament to the skill and commitment of its leadership and rank-and-file. Likewise, frequent strikes, workplace actions, and political activism sponsored by the confederation suggest a genuine militancy on the part of South Vietnam's unions and workers.

In Vietnam foreign-invested enterprises have experienced more strikes than their domestic counterparts. It is thus often claimed that the former have poorer labour conditions than the latter, based on the simple reasoning: the poorer the conditions, the more frequent the strikes. Comparisons between foreign and state enterprises have informed such an argument. Chan and Norlund (1998), for instance, argued that foreign enterprises, especially those funded by Hong Kong, Korean, and Taiwanese investors, are managed in authoritarian ways and often in violation of labour and safety laws. They contrasted them with state-owned enterprises (SOEs) whose socialist underpinnings infused with a paternalistic and collectivist culture help ameliorate the most adverse effects of market pressure on labour conditions in the reform era. According to this view, strikes are caused by labour conditions that are considered to differ depending on the type of enterprise ownership.

Two assumptions underlie this argument: the relative immutability of managerial culture across time and space; and the close relationship between labour conditions and worker resistance. The first assumption is challenged by evidence that firm-level managerial culture changes over time, as suggested by deteriorating conditions in SOEs under transition to a market economy (Whyte 1999). Managerial culture also changes when it crosses national borders, as is indicated by Chan and Wang's (2004) finding that Taiwanese firms in Vietnam have better labour conditions than those in China.

Clarke's (2006) research on strikes in Vietnam casts doubt on the second assumption, that of a strong correlation between labour conditions and strikes. His findings indicate that while in the past workers resorted to strikes largely to fight against abusive treatment and to ensure their legal rights, they now seek to advance their own interests above and beyond legally set minimum conditions and non-abusive treatment. If poor labour conditions per se lead to strikes, the rapid rise in the number of strikes in recent years should mean that legal violations and worker abuse have become more common or more severe. But existing evidence, at least as indicated by strikers' demands, does not support such an assumption (Clarke 2006; Lee 2006).

In the summer of 2008, Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) and adjacent Dong Nai Province in south Vietnam were experiencing an unprecedented proliferation of labour conflicts. One trade union leader in HCMC remarked, “this is the most chaotic change in labour–management relations since Doi Moi”. In the last week of July 2008, at least thirty factories in Dong Nai Province alone were undergoing strikes, while many factories in the industrial zones (IZs) and Export Processing Zones (EPZs) in the greater HCMC area, such as Bien Hoa I, Bien Hoa II, Long Thanh, and Linh Trung, had experienced labour disputes. The strikes were mainly in foreign-invested multinational factories and aimed at commercial or production disruption to protest low wages. Although they were illegal, the strikes were nonviolent and peacefully resolved.

To understand the nature of current labour–management conflicts and strikes, this chapter attempts to analyze the process of empowerment and disempowerment of the workers at a micro level in one foreign-invested joint-venture factory. As Hansson (2003, p. 175) postulates, if “conflicts occur outside the formal structure of the partystate and are still dealt with in an ad hoc manner largely depending on the local power configuration where conflicts take place”, then we need to explore how that local power is configured. Another question is whether there are consistent structural characteristics behind the “ad hoc manner” in which labour–management conflicts are dealt with.

This study will focus on the history of a factory, SIL, that had been a joint-venture between a private Korean company and a Vietnamese state-owned corporation for sixteen years, and was recently sold to private Vietnamese owners.

In previous chapters we have seen that the number of strikes in Vietnam has exploded, especially in the country's export industries. This chapter takes the phenomenon of strikes in the export sector further by placing it in comparative perspective, using China as a foil. This can help to further our understanding of Vietnamese strikes and their implications for Vietnam's industrial relations system.

Even though Vietnam and China have emerged from similar histories of Communist Party rule, the labour laws of the two countries are a study in contrasts. Nowhere is the distinction more marked than in the regulation of strikes. Vietnam has legislated complex provisions detailing when and how strikes can legally occur, and specifying the negotiations that must precede a strike. The intent is to regulate labour discontent by providing workers with a collective bargaining platform and strike procedures when bargaining breaks down, so as to reduce the outbreak of wildcat strikes. Chinese law, in contrast, does not mention strike actions, and as a result they are neither legal nor illegal. We therefore might expect fewer strikes in Vietnam, where legal sanctions exist to regulate them; but the reverse is the case. Vietnam witnesses waves of wildcat strikes, whereas China observes far fewer strike actions. Also unexpected is that although the strikes in Vietnam are illegal, they are unimpeded by the authorities, who often in fact act in the interests of the strikers, whereas strikes in China which cannot be categorized as illegal are nonetheless normally vigorously suppressed by the authorities.

To understand this sharp contrast in labour laws and their implementation, Section I of the chapter will compare the course of strikes in Vietnam and China. Section II will examine the underlying factors: the differences in the two countries' labour laws and legal regulatory regimes, the tripartite dispute-resolution institutions, the legal labour standards established by the governments, and the relationship between the government and the official trade union. Section III will analyze the trends in the two countries' industrial relations patterns.

Vietnam's rural population is changing enormously as the country increasingly integrates with the global economy. Some of the most radical of these changes are occuring in migration patterns, a redistribution of labour, and the status of women. This chapter aims to analyze these changes in greater depth by investigating a traditional craft village in northern Vietnam. How have livelihoods transformed in the craft village? What are the mechanisms of migration into and out of the village? How are gender divisions of labour changing in the village?

This great transition in agricultural livelihoods in Vietnam began earlier, of course, starting with initial decollectivization in the early 1980s and more recent acceleration via land reforms in the early 1990s. In the Red River Delta region, where the field research for this chapter was carried out, rural livelihoods have been transformed further by state rural industrialization policies, especially those aimed at reviving and developing traditional craft villages. As the slogan goes, “leaving the rice field, but not the countryside” (ly nong bat ly huong). As a result, rural people no longer rely on farming as a sole source of income, and their livelihood strategies have increasingly focused on non-agricultural activities.

Under Doi Moi's move toward a market-oriented economy, state regulations on rural labour have been loosened so that people can independently make decisions about their occupations and workplaces. Thus, Doi Moi policies have also propelled domestic labour migration flows. Labour migration patterns have become complex as can be seen in the case of traditional craft villages such as Kim Thieu in the Red River Delta where my research was conducted; not only do villagers migrate to work and do business elsewhere, including inland and abroad, but a number of migrants from other regions come to make their living in these villages as regular/long-term or casual contract labourers. Labour relations have also become more complex, with several concurrent and sometimes contradictory systems running — capitalist principles alongside a subsistence economy, as well as reciprocal relationships and patron–client exploitation.

Since the mid-1990s public protests in Vietnam have been increasing compared to the 1976–1995 period. Particularly numerous have been demonstrations by peasants and workers. This article examines protests by urban workers in private and state-owned factories and other types of workplaces.

Most of these workers' public protests have taken the form of strikes, the primary focus of my analysis. I address two sets of questions. One set concerns the protests themselves. What are workers pressing for, and why? What happens during strikes? Where do they occur, and are they peaceful, disruptive, or violent? How are they organized? And how do they occur, given that thus far they have all been illegal? The other set of questions concerns the consequences of these protests. What are the outcomes? What happens to the workers involved? How do employers respond? What are the reactions of state authorities, including those in the official labour confederation, and what do those reactions reveal about Vietnam's political system?

Although labour protests in contemporary Vietnam are my main concern, I compare them, insofar as available sources allow, to similar phenomena in the southern part of Vietnam (then the Republic of Vietnam [RVN]) during 1954–75, prior to the country's reunification. Because many of the strikes today occur in the southern half of Vietnam, a comparison between current and past protests reveals some differences between labour protests today and those of some fifty years earlier. Another goal of this study is to compare the forms and consequences of labour unrest in the two political settings — the anticommunist, semi-democratic/semi-authoritarian RVN that together with the United States was fighting internal wars, and the current, largely authoritarian, Communist Party-governed Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV). The analysis shows some similarities in what workers sought and the consequences of their protests. The contrasts, however, are more remarkable and help to highlight the significance of today's labour unrest for the present political system.

In the past two decades, the rapidly industrializing Asian region has witnessed highly mobile intraregional labour flows. A key feature of this phenomenon is the critical role that intermediary actors play at all stages of the labour migration process. Governments sign bilateral agreements on the export and import of low-skilled and unskilled labour and delegate the job of organizing the migration of workers to recruitment and placement actors. This profit-making system that recruits, trains, transports, and places workers in distant foreign workplaces is often referred to as the migration industry. Highlighting the centrality of intermediaries in labour migration, John Salt and Jeremy Stein (1997) describes the industry as “migration as a business”.

Since the early 1990s, this migration industry has seen unprecedented growth due to the rapid increase in contract migrant labourers moving between the economically developing and developed countries of Asia (Hugo 2004; Skeldon 2000). Japan and the so-called “tiger economies” of East Asia — Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore — have opened their doors to increasing numbers of temporary migrant workers from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and China. Despite their centrality and importance in Asian labour migration, those involved in the migration industry have been little studied, partly due to the difficulty of separating legal from illegal activities and the obstacles associated with a thorough investigation of such activities (Hugo 2004). Nonetheless, intermediary actors and their relationships with states and workers are an extremely important influence on migrant lives, working conditions, and income; any serious attempt to understand migration needs to pay attention to the role of these actors and the relationships among them.

In this chapter, we document and discuss the complexities of international labour export and import using the Vietnam–Taiwan dyad as a case study: Vietnam being the sending country, and Taiwan, the recipient. This system is complex, involving placement and recruitment intermediaries, state officials, and workers who rarely have a full understanding of the entire system in which they are all embedded and participate in.