Better Work Vietnam. Newsletter. No. 4, Sep-Dec 2011

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1 Highlighted Figures 1631 overtime hours per year was found in one supplier in Dong Nai. 500 hours per year is the average overtime of suppliers according to Better Work Vietnam assessments reports. 33 international brands are registered with Better Work Vietnam. Better Work Vietnam launched a green campaign to join hands in protecting the environment. The campaign started with friendly reminders about saving paper, being mindful when using electricity, water and other resources. Green is not just a campaign but will become a way of thinking at Better Work Vietnam. This is also to send a green message to all partners. Better Work Vietnam Newsletter No. 4, Sep-Dec 2011 High Turnover Rate A Barrier to Compliance Improvement Improving working conditions is a common objective of apparel factories, international buyers and other stakeholders. Better Work includes in its newsletters interviews with various stakeholders in order to provide various perspectives on the challenges and solutions to addressing common issues of noncompliance in the industry. Below is an interview with Hilde Gunn Vestad of adidas, who has been actively involved in Better Work Vietnam since its inception. Hilde Gunn Vestad, Regional Manager North Asia, Social & Environmental Affairs of adidas Better Work: What are the issues of non-compliance that you find most frequent in your Vietnamese suppliers and that concern you the most? Hilde Gunn: Excessive overtime is common. The standard in Vietnam is 300 overtime hours per worker per year is set by the government, but unfortunately we see breaches of this standard. We also find that health and safety conditions in apparel factories are poorer than those in footwear factories. Better Work: From your experience, what are the barriers to improving compliance in your supplying factories? Hilde Gunn: The factories are not good at retaining their Health and Safety Executives and Human Resource Managers assigned to set up the internal compliance system in the factories. Further, they lack management systems for maintenance. Sometimes having small capacity of orders gives us less leverage. Better Work: What are the areas that you think your suppliers in Vietnam should improve to increase their competitiveness? In This Issue: Training Available p.3 International Factory p6 Hilde Gunn: For a factory, the very essential part of improving competitiveness is having good workers and retaining them. Salaries always play an important role, however there are other tangible benefits for workers that make the factories for attractive to them. Some of our factories have implemented some practices for example day care centre, dormitories, supermarkets and free motorbike maintenance center. Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) is also very important. Unfortunately it is now being under-evaluated by many factories. CBA on the one hand helps to establish a positive connection within factories and therefore effectively prevent strikes. Better Work: Thank you very much for your inputs. 1

2 Strikes and Social Dialogue By Nguyen Ba Nhi, Enterprise Advisor of Better Work Vietnam In the last few months, strikes in the southern provinces of Vietnam including Dong Nai, Binh Duong, and Ho Chi Minh City -- have continued to rise, particularly in the apparel industry. A lot of research regarding the issue has been done, but it is a challenge to apply theory to practice. There are many reasons for strikes. Normally, workers say they go on strike to ask for increased wages and benefits. Interestingly, strikes happen in some factories, but not others. Why is this the case? there are many kinds of dialogue that have increased understanding between which is highlighted through an interview with the factory director (see page 6). As she notes, there is regular dialogue between the General Director and workers each month. In these meetings, workers can bring up issues of concern to them. Management cannot address all of the workers concerns, but the workers know their voice has been heard and feel respected by the factory. Communication to the top management is another crucial area to improve the relationship between workers and management. Some factories are aware of the issue and make an effective approach to reach out to workers. For instance, some factories in Ho Chi Minh City give workers a mobile phone number so they can send a text if they have any concerns or issues to raise with the management. IN BRIEF Better Work Training Strategic Meeting The participatory methods of Better work training courses have shown to have a significant impact on changing behaviour, agreed Better Work training staff from Cambodia, Jordan, and Vietnam in the firstever Strategic Training Meeting organized in Jordan during the first week of August. In particular, Better Work staff noted the positive results coming from Supervisory Skills, Worker Training courses. During the meeting, training staff from country programs shared experiences in rolling out training services, brainstormed opportunities and challenges of effective training, and provided inputs to the development of new training products being developed at the global level. This is the first annual meeting of the Better Work Training team aiming at coordinating countries in a global effort to provide quality training products across Better Work countries. A regular meeting at Nalt Factory. recognized this and encouraged management to learn the workers mother tongue. the understanding between management and workers, but also helps close the gap between them. As a result, the misunderstanding between employers and employees has decreased due to language communication. It is also essential that management pays close attention to their behavior toward workers. While many factories spend efforts to educate management on effective located in Binh Duong province where the workers went on strike. In this factory, workers said that one of the reasons that they went to strike was over management behavior, in particular of some of their direct supervisors. Averting strikes is a complicated social issue that can be addressed through many dialogue. The active participation of workers in making decisions and their ability to express their concerns greatly helps improve relationships in factories and can allow for workers and managers to resolve issues before leading to a strike. Third Compliance Synthesis Report Synthesis Report will be published in September upon approval by The report includes assessment data aggregated from reports of 98 factories, 12 of which have been assessed for the second year. The 3rd synthesis report will present information showing change over time for those 12 factories that have received two assessment visits. Initial data shows impressive results, with an improvement across all areas of core labor standards as well as significant change in occupational health and safety. This is the direct result of the program s ongoing advisory services work with factories. 2

3 Successfully Completed participated in the pilot Training of 29, During the workshop, HR were trained on participatory delivery skills and how to use Better work materials effectively. Available for the garment Industry I feel more confident after participating in the course and learning new techniques to involve the audience and attract their attention when speaking in public, said Ms. Nguyen Thi Minh Thai, Recruitment Department, Garmex. Ms. Nguyen Thi Minh, General affairs officer from Eclat also shared with us that After attending the course I understand the importance of worker induction training. With the course s training methodology, the workers will be more active in learning about their rights and responsibilities and therefore will better understand the contents. According to Ms. Tara Rangarajan, Manager, This course will not only help factories successfully conduct worker induction training with interactive materials and participatory methodology developed by Better Work but more importantly it helps factories enhance training competencies which is an important factor to compliance improvement. In September 2011, Better Work Vietnam will open two new training programs training programs will focus on how simple techniques such as workplace designation can help improve productivity, reduce errors, decrease turn-over rate, enhance customers satisfaction, and increase factories competitiveness. The programs also introduce important tools and techniques commonly used in have opportunities to interact and discuss factors that contribute to their factories productivity, analyse the strengths and weaknesses of each technique, and learn how to combine all techniques to achieve desired outputs. increasing productivity and quality in their own factories. After taking this course, those factories that have joined Better Work Vietnam will also receive additional advisory services from Better Work Vietnam to help them finalize and implement their improvement plans. With these two training courses, Better Work Vietnam hopes to further strengthen the ability of factories to integrate their social compliance efforts with improved quality and productivity. 3

4 pressures in their role. They work directly with customers and auditors as well as dealing with daily operational matters. In addition, a strong relationship with a range of external stakeholders is essential to their job.? Better Work Vietnam will dedicate a space in each newsletter to promote understanding about the role of compliance offers and to create a platform for compliance staff to share views and ideas. Some of the key features of this section will include: Compliance Inside stories of compliance officers Resources sharing: Examples of good practices or things that compliance their lives easier. Questions their colleagues in other factories. Compliance Any comments and ideas please contact Ms. Hoa Binh Nguyen, Communications and Training Coordinator at binh@betterwork.org Advisor at phongle@betterwork.org. Supervisory Skills Training Available in Chinese job. For an expatriate supervisor, it can be even more challenging when language barriers and cultural differences come into play. In Vietnam, there are a growing there is a heightened risk miscommunication and misunderstandings that can negatively affect the factory. In order to help Chinese speaking supervisors overcome some of these barriers, develop professional supervisory skills, and build up good relationship with workers, Better Work Vietnam offers the Supervisory Skills Training in Chinese. The course will be delivered based on practical situations and case studies that supervisors face and help them quickly identify and resolve common problems. Activity at a Supervisory Skills Training. Better Work Regional Buyer Forum on Better Factories Cambodia, Better Work Vietnam, and region-wide Better Work issues. issues related to program services and delivery. a series of sub-groups focused on the issues of management systems, subcontracting, service quality, and buyer collaboration at the factory level. Each of those buyer-led sub-groups has been working during the past three months on concrete proposals The upcoming Better Work Buyers Forum is important in moving forward buyers partnership with the program. Buyers are taking an increasingly proactive role in providing input and expertise to Better Work and we look forward to continuing that head of the Better Work Asia Buyers Forum Sub-group. 4

5 Better Work Vietnam offers a range of targeted training programs to managers, supervisors and workers, both in the classroom SUPERVISORY SKILLS TRAINING About the course: The Supervisory Skills Training brings benefits to both factories and their workers who participate. Specifically, it and communication and cooperation between sections. Target participants: Supervisors and managers of garment factories. Duration and dates: WORKERS TRAINING About the course: Workers Training is designed to raise awareness of garment workers about their rights and responsibilities in the workplace. The training uses dramatic and fun soap opera-style videos and accompanying comic books. The training materials are designed for a low-literacy audience with a high proportion of young women workers. Episode 1: Grievance Handling Episode 2: Dispute Resolution Episode 3: Stealing Target participants: All workers in garment factories. Duration and dates: 1 hour training session. Available weekly upon registration. WORKPLACE COOPERATION About the course: This course helps participants better appreciate the importance of resolving issues of common concern through confidence among workers and managers, increasing motivation and promoting cooperation at the workplace. the international and Vietnamese contexts. Target participants: Management and union and/or worker representatives from garment factories. Duration and dates: OCCUPATION SAFETY AND HEALTH (OSH) About the course: training gives guidance on how to improve safety and health within factories to meet both national and and health within the enterprise, but also offer low-cost suggestions for improving working conditions and increasing productivity. Target participants: Duration and dates: NEGOTIATION SKILLS About the course: Negotiation for win-win solutions is designed for factory managers and union representatives at garment factories. The curriculum helps participants learn to work together to solve their issues and make improvements in a systematic and well-planned way. Negotiation is a core skill that, if implemented correctly and built on trust, can lead to enhanced relationships in factories, which improves the effectiveness of workplace cooperation. Target participants: Factory owners, factory managers and human resource managers, supervisors and union/worker representatives. Duration and dates: PRODUCTIVITY About the course: Target participants: Duration and dates: QUALITY About the course: Target participants: Duration and dates: In this course, participants will learn the correct definition of productivity, how to measure it and ways to of analyzing each operation in the process with the view to reducing and eliminating unnecessary movements and materials handling. The human side of productivity is to manage the workforce of the factory, for example, how to organize the workplace economically, how to provide a safe working place, and how to maximize the utilization of resources, labor, materials and equipment. This course will help participants understand the importance of continuously improving quality in the factory. improving quality in the factory. In addition, the training will introduce innovative approaches to quality assurance in the factory. All trainings above can also be offered to individual enterprises on any date most convenient for the factory. For training registration or more information, please contact Ms. Nguyen Hoa Binh, Training and Communications Coordinator at or by at binh@betterwork.org.

6 channels for them to communicate with each other on both good practices as Factory Director. Better Work: Communicating with workers about their rights and responsibilities is very important, how this is being done at Nalt? Ms. Trang: When recruiting new workers, we carefully explain to them about the factory regulations and their rights, benefits and responsibilities when working at Nalt. This is very important for them to quickly adapt to a new working environment and facilitate good relations between them and their supervisors. Better Work: Information sharing can be done during daily operations as well -- not only when a worker joins the factory. What are the practices at your factory to regularly share information? Ms. Trang will handle it based on the factory s regulations and policies. If the case if more complicated, it will be brought to the Director. At Nalt, workers do not have any There is another communications channel for workers which are our production meetings. During this time, supervisors represent their workers and raise issues or make recommendations. And normally every month we hold a factory meeting and brief our workers about factory performance, new developments and also the application of workers initiatives. With these activities, our workers will understand that they are listened to and cared for. Better Work : It takes many efforts to do these especially from you as the Factory s Director. What motivates you to do so? Ms. Trang: My factory is my family. I spend even more time at Nalt then at my own house. All of my staff have the same understanding and each member makes a contribution and has a responsibility for the factory s development and to support each other and have a good working attitude. Better Work: Thank you very much for your time and inputs. Better Work Vietnam promotes enterprise-level good practices. If your factory has good practices you wish to share, please contact Ms. Nguyen Thi Hoa Binh, Training & Communications Coordinator at binh@betterwork.org or Better Work Vietnam is supported by Australian Government and IFC s Sustainable Business The Better Work global program is supported by the following (in alphabetical order): Enterprises and Buyers As of August 2011, there were 122 factories registered with Better Work Vietnam assessment and advisory services, while 33 buyers subscribed to view factory reports and engage with the program. Better Work Vietnam would like to welcome the following enterprises and buyers who have recently joined the program. Enterprises: IGM Iwasaki M&J Nam Ho Tongyu Textile Top Flash Royal Viet My Buyers: Boolim Buying Corporation For regularly updated and complete list of all participating factories and buyers, please visit: Contact us Assessment & Advisory Registration Ms. Nguyen Bich Nga nga@betterwork.org Training Enquiry & Registration Ms. Nguyen Thi Hoa Binh binh@betterwork.org For electronic subscription, please subscribe through our website at For other enquiries, please contact us at vietnam@betterwork.org.