Working hours reduction in VN to create issues for textile, garment industry

THE reduction of working hours from 48 hours per week to 44 hours will create difficulties for textile and garments enterprises, said Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association ( Vitas) vice-chairman Truong Van Cam in the response to the draft-revised Labour Code which made the change in May this year.

He told Vietnam News Agency that the industry is facing many challenges. Reducing the working week would have a negative impact on the industry and the economy.

Currently, Vietnam sets normal working hours to not exceed 48 hours per week, enterprises of many industries such as textile and garment, leather and footwear still have to use all permitted overtime of 300 hours per year, he said.

“With the textile and garment industry at the present production scale, reducing weekly working hours by four will reduce the industry’s export value by at least $3 billion per year,” Cam said.

Vietnam is a developing country, so a reduction means a reduction of production in goods and services, leading to a reduced gross domestic product (GDP) for the society and GDP per capita, Cam said.

“Moreover, if working hours are reduced, businesses will have to recruit more workers to maintain the same volume of production and export value of the textile and garment industry at present, and spend trillions more dong to pay workers’ salaries,” Cam said.

“This is not feasible because at present, the textile and garment industry has faced labour shortages and there is competition to recruit workers, especially skilled workers. Businesses must also increase spending, which will lead to a reduction in their competitiveness.”

For many years, enterprises in the garment and textile industry and some other industries have repeatedly asked the state to extend overtime to facilitate production, he said.

“We recommend not reducing normal working hours from 48 hours per week to 44 hours,” Cam said.

“For overtime, I agree with keeping the regulation of daily overtime working hours not exceeding 50 per cent of the normal daily working time.”

However, existing regulations have caused difficulties for businesses, especially for fashion and seasonal industries such as textiles, footwear and fisheries, he said. The industries will have periods where they must boost production to ensure quick delivery, so they will all require overtime working hours.

At present, the state regulates overtime to be no more than 200 hours per annum for general industries and 300 hours per annum for specific industries like textile, garment and footwear.

Countries in the region also have much higher overtime hours than Vietnam. Therefore, Vitas asked to increase the maximum allowed overtime working hours to 300 hours per annum for general industries and 450 hours for specific industries, he said.