Companies in southern Vietnam have been hit by 43 labour strikes in the past three months, 16 of them in Japanese and South Korean companies, the government said according to state media on April 04.
In the increased industrial action, workers had walked out over wages, working hours, rest periods and social insurance, Labour Ministry senior official Le Xuan Thanh was quoted as saying by the Vietnam News daily.
Workplace unrest had risen in part due to a labour shortage in industrial parks and export processing zones around Ho Chi Minh City, the head of the ministry's labour relations team Nguyen Manh Cuong was quoted as saying.
Many workers had not returned from their home towns after the Tet traditional Lunar New Year holidays in mid-February, he said.
Vietnam, where manual labourers typically earn around 50 dollars a month, has become a popular destination for foreign producers of footwear, textiles and garments, electronics and automobiles.
Early last year a major wave of wildcat strikes, some of them violent, hit mostly foreign-owned companies in Vietnam, with tens of thousands of workers downing tools in demand for higher wages and better conditions.
To avert further strikes this year, Vietnam needed to enforce labour laws and establish an agency to help workers and employers negotiate, said Cuong.
Labour unions independent of the ruling Communist Party are banned in Vietnam and industrial relations experts say that workplaces currently lack transparent arbitration mechanisms to settle labour disputes. Activists of the banned United Workers-Farmers Organisation, a group which has demanded the right to form independent labour unions, says police have arrested and jailed several of its members since November.