Seminar “Evaluating working conditions from the perspective of employees – Cooperation opportunities between Social Organizations & Trade Unions”

“The survey results on the working conditions of employees through the We Check app are a valuable data store with high use value.”

This is the opinion of experts in the field of labor at the seminar: “Assessment of working conditions from the perspective of employees – Cooperation opportunities between Social Organizations & Trade Unions” which has just been developed by the Center for Economic Development. and Integration (CDI) held on the morning of December 28 in Hanoi. The conference is organized in both forms: face-to-face and online.

At the seminar, the delegates were introduced to We Check application – an application researched and developed by CDI for 5 years and just launched in October 2021.

The application has 6 main features:

• Employees self-assess working conditions based on 8 basic labor standards
• Employees self-assess occupational health status
• Consultancy on labor law and occupational health by lawyers, medical experts, and qualified doctors
• Guide employees to practice with daily exercises to improve health and prevent occupational diseases
• Provide references to legal regulations, occupational health and other documents of interest to employees

New & Hot: Updates related to employees

After 2 months of implementation, up to now, more than 500 employees have installed and used the application, of which about 400 employees have self-assessed working conditions through We Check.

Based on the results that employees have self-assessed their working conditions, the research team has synthesized, analyzed and made notable initial findings such as:

• No criterion of all labor standards is 100% fulfilled.
• The apparel industry scores higher than the electronics industry on all eight labor standards.
• Enterprises (DN) performed most inadequately in the main criteria, which were in group of standards 02 on the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining and standard 06 on reasonable working time.

Regarding the characteristics of working conditions during the Covid-19 pandemic, the survey results show that businesses have not done well in setting up a Covid-19 team to inspect and supervise the implementation of 5K in the workplace. However, other criteria are fully fulfilled with a rather high rate.

Explaining the results of this survey, Dr. Do Quynh Chi – Director of the ERC Labor Relations Research Center said that textile enterprises often hire a third party to supervise the implementation of labor standards while electronic enterprises are often at the top or bottom of the chain. Suppliers should often self-assess and not have a third party involved. T.S. Do Quynh Chi highly appreciates We Check’s design and approach to employees, considering it a multi-purpose tool, especially when surveys form a chain and have results throughout many years.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Thuy, an expert from the Department of Propaganda-Women, Vietnam Textile and Garment Trade Union, said that the Textile and Garment Industry is one of the first units to sign the Industry Collective Labor Agreement since 2010 with about 80% of enterprises. participation. Textile and garment enterprises, when signing production contracts for brands, must comply with very high standards set by brands, so enterprises must make efforts to improve working conditions for employees if they do not want to self-destruct. Therefore, in recent years, the working conditions of workers in textile and garment enterprises have improved significantly, and social welfare has also improved much compared to before.

Ms. Thuy also highly appreciates the WE CHECK application, she thinks that this is a very timely and practical channel to “capture public opinion” that honestly reflects the opinions of employees, helps Trade Unions and businesses. provide quick, reasonable and effective handling measures.

Besides the positive reviews, experts also think that CDI should (i) try to reach more workers, increase the number of workers using the application to self-assess their working conditions and health. career, especially extending to employees in Southern enterprises, (ii) adjust the language of the questions to make them feel more friendly and understandable, (iii) have a reasonable design so that employees can perform them. Periodic survey or instant response depending on the urgency of the matter…

Experts, researchers, and trade union representatives participating in the seminar initially discussed orientations for cooperation between Social Organizations and Trade Unions in using the results of the assessment of working conditions obtained from the application. Use We Check to improve working conditions for employees.

The application development and data analysis team also made recommendations to trade unions at all levels on strengthening dialogue and negotiation with businesses about the criteria that businesses have not done well, grassroots unions should use multiple as a source of assessment information about SSC as input for dialogue in the workplace.

CDI Vietnam.

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