Ministry lets workers decide on raising overtime cap

October 24, 2016 | 15:14

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The Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) will conduct a nation-wide survey on the amount of extra hours Vietnamese workers would be happy to work before lodging a proposal to raise the cap, meant to satisfy foreign employers’ recurring requests.

Doan Mau Hiep - photo source: molisa.gov.vn

Deputy Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Doan Mau Diep told VIR about this plan on the side-lines of the conference on social dialogue, productivity, and working conditions held today in Hanoi by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs of Switzerland (SECO), the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and the MoLISA.

“The ministry is going to work with the General Confederation of Labour to survey workers throughout the country,” he confirmed. “We are going to propose raising the cap but any change needs to be subject to general agreement amongs workers and employers.”

Under the Labour Code, which took effect in 2012, a worker can work a maximum of 200 hours overtime per year, and 300 hours per year in special cases stipulated by the government, equal to half of the 600 hours a year recommended by the ILO.

The MoLISA is in the process of drafting amendments to the 2012 Labour Code, including the overtime cap. As planned, the draft amendments will be submitted to the National Assembly for discussion in May 2017. If everything goes smoothly, they can be adopted in October next year.

The conference on social dialogue, productivity, and working conditions is a forum for the Vietnamese government, the ILO, as well as business communities, workers’ organisations, and other stakeholders to review the country’s legal and institutional framework to improve productivity and working conditions, and to design and implement more effective policies in this area.

According to a study produced by the ILO, productivity in Vietnam is among the lowest in the Asia-Pacific. Though working conditions have been improving, serious limitations remain, especially in the informal areas, and the country’s inspection capacity is limited in quantity and quality. Social dialogue, particularly at the enterprise level, is still only a formality.