Asian Transnational Corporations and Labor Rights: Vietnamese Trade Unions in Taiwan-invested Companies

According to the reports in the past decade, some Asian subcontractors, mainly Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea transnational corporations, tend to be labor abusive in their overseas investment destinations like China or Southeast Asia. Taking Vietnam as an example, this paper raises questions as to why Taiwanese transnational companies can control workplace unions in a trade-union-supportive regime. Given the government’ s constraint of political rights, and the individualized workplace unions, the function of trade unions in Vietnam is destined to be limited. The trade unions turn out be an arm of management, rather than representing workers’ interests in these transnational companies. This article also explores the influence of the newly developed ‘codes of conducts’ from Western buyers. In the survey of three companies which are required to follow the codes of conduct by buyers, trade unions had no more freedom than those in companies without codes of conduct. The paper discusses the implications of this research, offering strategies for labor rights improvements.