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Artikel

23 Dez 2021

Autor:
Rebecca Ratcliffe & Nhung Nguyen, The Guardian

Vietnam: Migrant factory workers manufacturing goods for Western brands vulnerable to the impact of COVID-19 on production

"Asia’s factory workers at the sharp end of the west’s supply chain crisis", 23 December 2021

[…]

A Covid wave that spread across the industrial areas of Vietnam earlier this year placed intense pressure on the country’s manufacturing sector...

In the run up to Christmas, retailers scrambled to prioritise which products were most needed by shops…

The real crisis, though, has been felt by the workers – many of them internal migrants…

In July, when Covid cases escalated, a severe lockdown was imposed across industrial areas, banning people from leaving their homes... Hundreds of thousands of workers moved into factories through an arrangement known as “three-on-site”, where workers sleep, work and eat in their factory…

For workers whose factories closed down during lockdown, there was no alternative but to stay in their rental rooms...They were unable to earn a living, yet prevented from returning home to their families...

When movement restrictions were lifted...many workers decided they had enough, and left industrial areas en masse…

Tran Thi Lan* was one of a reported 300,000 people who left Binh Duong, part of the garment manufacturing hub in the south...

Normally she earns a basic monthly salary of about VND4.8m (154.56 GBP), making trainers. She would get an additional VND20,000 (64p) per hour of overtime and VND300,000 (9.66 GBP) more as a food stipend. It wasn’t much, she said... Her company...gave her no support, she said…

The crisis has underlined the vulnerability of migrant workers’ lives...Tu said. …In the past, foreign-owned companies have been known to simply close down without paying workers’ wages or social insurance benefits.

Access to public services is also tied to a person’s registered address in their home province, which means they’re unable to access key services…working away in the industrial areas…

Factories now face significant labour shortages because so many workers have left…

There are also continued, sporadic Covid outbreaks, which lead to temporary shutdowns. On top of this, manufacturers and brands face continued disruption to the supply of raw materials and to shipping…

Tu…she fears the pressures on those workers who remain in the industrial areas could be amplified, as they face the mammoth task of overcoming months of delayed production. The government has proposed lifting the annual overtime cap from 200 hours to 300 hours to boost the sector’s recovery from Covid…