Shoe Workers Strike in Vietnam

As inflation is skyrocketing across Vietnam, more and more workers are striking as a strong sign of increasing struggle to take back some of their labour value from the employers.  This past year alone consumer prices have risen 21% in Vietnam.  The Taiwanese-owned shoe company which provides footwear for brands such as Timberland and Prada for export to Europe and other parts of Asia is currently paying the workers approximately $50 U.S. per month.  The workers are now demanding a reduction in working hours which are currently 13 hours per day, coupled with wage increases to $62 per month.  When the same workers held a strike last year for increased wages, the company threatened to fire the workers and close the factory but then it did make some concessions.

It is increasingly clear that not only do the companies profit enormously with the cheap labour of the workers, but they too resist the nature of the economics of capitalism whereby there is a constant struggle between labour and capital.  Labour resists through workers using their labour power to strike and the employers resist ‘giving back’ some of the profits or surplus value which must always continue to increase.  Increasing wages denies the employers their profits.  A more formidable example of this is the current movement of production from China where the currency is appreciating and the government is beginning to implement some labour regulations which will erode the profits; so some companies are moving more towards inland China as well as Vietnam and other places where the wages are even lower. 

However, in order to survive, that is be able to afford the basics - rice, shelter etcetera – the workers struggle and fight back with their only reliable weapon, their labour force.  As prices rise their wages are eroding, their purchasing power is diminished and the only means to secure a decent living is to fight for higher wages.  The global economy has a powerful ripple effect whereby its ups and downs are weathered most by every single worker around the world.  This means that workers in Canada who earn in two hours what workers in Vietnam are fighting for in one month must realize the connection, that is, that they must support workers internationally.  Workers from Western countries who earn wages that enable them to earn their living much better than workers in developing countries must understand that they could instantaneously be in similar situations, and it has happened.  On numerous occasions factories in North America have from one moment to the next have picked up and left for countries where labour costs are lower thus allowing them to increase their profits.  It would be foolish to think that workers in more developed countries are truly better off when lay-offs persist, wages are frozen, benefits are repealed etcetera.  An international struggle must take place.

Workers living day to day must fight for immediate demands such as wage increases and better working conditions but also must realize the source of the crisis – capitalism which is based on workers selling their labour for wages, therefore the struggle must also maintain a clear vision of abolishing wage-slavery.  This translates into the necessity for an international anti-capitalist worker organization as all workers are linked together by a vicious system – capitalism, and more importantly are linked together through their labour force which holds the means to injure and even destroy the root of this human devastation called capitalism.