A discourse analysis about career and social status of the Vietnam working class: A case study from Binh Duong province, Vietnam

 in the company there are 
regulations on keeping workers’ Tet salary to prevent they will not return. But she 
thinks most of workers disagree with this regulation. However, they could not speak 
out, because: 
“Because of the people cannot make the money to pay for the family, so they are afraid 
of being fired.” (Ms L., female worker) 
The worker’s limited voice is also correlated with ineffective management of local 
government. According to the workers, ineffective management of local government 
due to the lack of interest in worker’s lives. 
“The local government doesn’t strict management with the companies. It abuses the 
labor force of worker but they rarely intervene.” (L., female worker) 
At another level of management is the union organization, which is seen as representing 
worker’s voice, but as Mr M.Q.T said the union’s role is limited due to the space gap. 
When the union is usually not located near industrial zones. 
“There is only labor union but it is far away. If I want to go there, it will take me a lot 
of time.” 
Through our research, the trade union also falls into a “passive” position in resolving 
conflicts of interest between company and worker. Trade union intervenes when there 
are signs of strike of workers, in other words, they only get involved when disputes 
between company and worker become so intense that they cannot be reconciled. The 
Strike labor 
Quit job 
Cook rice at home 
Feedback to trade 
union 
Do nothing 
Other opinion 
Nguyen Quang Huy - Volume 3 - Issue 1-2021, p. 36-54 
50 
trade union often settles in the direction of reconciliation between company and worker. 
Mr H., representing the labor union, answered us methodically about the role and duty 
of the trade union when handling the strike of workers. 
“The task of trade union is not to let the strike of workers break out. If it happens, there 
are two ways: Firstly, we claim the company meets interest of the workers. Secondly, if 
it beyond the resolve authority of us, we will inform the federation. They go to discuss 
the problem with company to solve”. 
The role of trade union was emphasized by Mr H. as the mediator between stakeholders. 
However, in my opinion, the root of the problem is not that the trade union acts as an 
intermediary in dispute resolution but the role of the trade union should be understand 
the mind and aspiration of workers. In fact, this aspect seems to rarely have attended 
from trade union and other organization. Through conservation with worker’s 
representatives, we recognized a pattern work style. Mrs T., who is working currently at 
the women union, shared us about her conciliation work. She told us about the 
conciliation the strike of workers at the company. The solution is usually told workers 
and then she persuades them to return to work. Like the trade union, the women union 
only stands out to reconcile the conflict between workers and company when the strike 
of workers happened. However, they don’t pay attention to conflict in everyday that 
lead to strikes. 
According to the workers, the biggest limit of the trade union is the little attention to 
worker’s opinion. As Ms L. said about giving Tet gifts to workers. According to her, the 
Tet gifts for workers must be based on their actual needs. Her opinion is that the trade 
union in her company should buy foods that are practical worker’s live such as cooking 
oil or MSG, but this was not heard by the trade union. Instead, she received cans of 
swallow water, which in her judgment was not delicious. 
“My trade union is very bad. They don’t defend the workers. Like Tet gifts, they ask 
team leader’s opinion what gifts gave they the workers this year but when the team 
leader replied that the workers would to receive cooking oil or MSG, they said workers 
had all these things. Finally, they gave swallow water but it was not delicious.” 
Business judge similarly worker’s point of view when they think that trade union only 
play a supporting role in worker’s lives when they are facing difficulties. According to 
them, the trade union in the company is only formality. It doesn’t not take real benefits 
to workers. When we were asked if it was really necessary to establish a trade union in 
company, Mr. V, Head of human resource in FDI business, told frankly with us: 
“The law requires trade union checks social security and represent worker but it’s just 
a formality. While the employer pays the union’s salary.” 
Thu Dau Mot University Journal of Science - Volume 3 - Issue 1-2021 
51 
He concluded about the role of trade union just to “pay a fee”. Then when we continued 
to question whether the worker’s rights were really guaranteed without support from the 
union, he replied workers work to earn income to help themselves and family but rarely 
interested in participating in other social activities. When their benefits are guaranteed, 
workers do not need them trade union. 
“Workers go to work to earn income. If they have unsatisfied income, they need 
allowance, other income or the union must support them.” 
However, from the union’s perspective, Mr K., who represents for the confederation 
labor, told us the reason why the trade union are difficult to establish in businesses is 
that the presence of the trade union in the company give workers more voice. Moreover, 
it will increase understanding of laws for workers, thereby leading to business need to 
ensure more compliance with laws. According to him, most of the strikes of worker are 
caused by the business does not meet the employee’s rights in term of salary and 
working regime. Business are dissatisfied when trade union provide legal support to 
workers as well as help them propose recommendations to authorities. Therefore, 
businesses are often “listless” and do not facilitate for the trade union. 
“In the past, many workers only knew how to work. They were not less demanded 
because they did not understand laws. When they more understood laws, they demanded 
the trade union to intervene. The business must to response laws for employees.” 
During interviews with union organizations and businesses, we found that they avoided 
directly answering questions whether they actually listened to worker’s voice. The 
limitation in the workers’ voice partly explains the conflict between the worker 
discourse and the state discourse about their position as mentioned above. Their voices 
do not receive positive feedback from leaders. Organizations represents worker such as 
the trade unions or women unions do not go into real world to listen their voice. It is for 
this reason workers lose trust in social organizations. 
Moreover, I realized behind the material poverty life is an extremely rich and complex 
inner world of the worker. Entered into their life world and established relationship with 
them, I felt that they opened to share opinions and feelings about problems in their life. 
Therefore, if we touch existential problems in real life of workers, we will create a close 
dialogue space. Then we can see on the other side of workers is human workers (human 
being) thinking and acting for their life. This suggests an approach that requires us to 
see workers as existences in their life world rather than as objects that exist in abstract 
categories. “The most current of such transformations occurs in storytelling and 
generally in artistic transposition of individual experiences.” (Hannah Areandt, 
1958:50). Arendt’s statement reminds us to pay more attention to storytelling and 
experience’s individual rather than grand narratives. 
Nguyen Quang Huy - Volume 3 - Issue 1-2021, p. 36-54 
52 
4. Conclusion 
Since the birth of the Vietnamese Communist Party under the influence of Marxism – 
Lenin has attached the role of the working class to a historic mission as the main force 
and leading class of the revolution for national liberation and move on socialism. 
Despite going through many historical periods with different missions and objectives, 
the working class is still defaulted in official state discourse as a leading force to fight, 
defend and build the country. However, in contrast to the historical ideological 
discourse of the state, the survey data actually show that the workers did not appreciate 
their career and social status. They talked themselves by words such as: plants, 
vegetables, machinesetc. partly reflects the actual image of workers in industrial 
zones. All of above words are the discourse that reflects the living world of individual 
and thereby portrays a part of the immigrant workers. They are poor people in the 
countryside. For different reasons, they choose the big cities to seek opportunities to 
change their fate. 
From the perceptions of workers about the career and social status, it is shown the 
difference with state discourse about the social position of the working class. Workers’ 
experience in daily interactions with other individuals is one of the reasons that workers 
perceive themselves as a lower social status than other career in the system social 
hierarchy. Consequently, workers discourse shows a contradictory image of workers’ 
perceptions of the state discourse that has been “theatricalization” of the state as 
analyzed by James Scott (1985) of a positive image of the role and social status of the 
working class. This different in another point of view stems from the fact that the state 
discourse has been encoded in an economic - political framework of thinking which is 
dominated by historical value systems and thus frame workers in fix social roles and 
positions. As a result, the state discourse missed out the voice of the workers coming 
from their real life circumstances. 
1. See more Nguyễn Đức Lộc’s analysis in his article Hiện trạng tiếp cận mức độ phúc lợi xã hội của 
công nhân tỉnh Bình Dương và đề xuất mô hình hợp lý, pp.65 in Đời sống xã hội Việt Nam đương đại 
(2015). Based on worker’s income per month, Lộc divided into five groups. The poorest group has an 
income of 800.000VND - 2.510.000VND (accounting for 21.3%), the second group has an income of 
2.510.000VND – 3.000.000VND (accounting for 18.9%), the third group has an income of 
3.004.000VND – 3.500.000VND (accounting for 20.8%), the fourth group has an income of 
3.510.000VND – 3.998.500VND (accounting for 18.5%) and the group has highest income over 
4.000.000VND (accounting for 20.6%). 
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