Factory worker welfare and the commodification of labour in market socialist Vietnam: Debates on overtime work in the revised labour code

Abstract

State socialist Vietnam formally embraced market reforms in the mid-1980s, and since then advancing marketization under the undisrupted rule of the Communist party. As marketization deepens, the party state’s legitimacy continues to rest on socialist practices of governance, structures of feeling and visions of a class-free society. This political-economic context gives rise to struggles between market and socialist logics over the social question in an economy that now powers global production with raw material and cheap labour, much of which is migrant labour. This article highlights these struggles through an analysis of the public debates around the regulation of overtime work during the revision of the 1994 Labour Code by Vietnam’s National Assembly in 2019, which foresees limiting it to ensure workers’ well-being. While parties to the debate position themselves as pro-business or pro-workers, they all evoke socialist narratives of nation-building, solidarity and care while emphasizing the market ethos of competitiveness and productivity. In arguing for removing the limit, the pro-business camp highlights the workers’ responsibility to contribute to the competitiveness of the country and their employers by working overtime to make up for their low productivity. In contrast, the pro-worker camp pleads for limiting overtime work on the grounds of workers’ poor health and difficult family lives, portraying their sufferings as deserving compassion. Despite these contrasting justifications, both arguments are characterized by the assumption of self-responsibility as the mainstay of well-being and failure to acknowledge the deeper societal problems posed by the commodification of labour.