Not understanding the law, many workers lose their rights

Workers do not understand the law

One weekday morning, Ms. Nguyen Thi Nga (Nghi Loc) came to the Nghe An Trade Union Legal Consulting Center to ask for advice and support. Her story is similar to that of many workers today when their businesses evade paying social insurance, health insurance, and unemployment insurance, causing their rights to be seriously affected.

While grinding wood pulp, Ms. Nga's arm was crushed by a machine, but after treatment, the company only agreed to pay her 10 million VND in compensation and announced the termination of her contract; other legitimate benefits such as salary during her treatment, support, and compensation according to regulations were not paid.

Workers at Nghe An Shipbuilding Mechanical Joint Stock Company. Illustration photo: PA

Too upset, carrying the pain of losing a part of her body, this female worker wrote a lawsuit against the company and asked the Trade Union Legal Advice Center to intervene. The center advised Ms. Nga to have the injury results assessed, organized a mediation between the two parties and requested the company to compensate according to the law.

This is just one of many cases that the Trade Union Legal Consulting Center has successfully "resolved", but not all workers and employees know and seek this legal "support" like Ms. Nga. During the process of consulting and disseminating the law, trade union officials realized that the understanding of workers about the law in general and labor law and social insurance law in particular is still limited.

Many workers only pay attention to information about wages, working days, overtime income, etc., but have not paid attention to and learned about the Labor Law and the Social Insurance Law to protect their legitimate rights and interests.

In recent years, many strikes have occurred, many individual labor disputes have been accepted by the court, but workers do not have full understanding of labor laws, causing labor disputes to often drag on, and strikes to be difficult to reconcile.

The Provincial Federation of Labor organizes communication on labor law and drug prevention in Ky Son district. Photo: PA

In order to overcome the situation of workers and laborers being “blind” to the Law, in addition to the activities of the Trade Union Legal Consulting Center, trade unions at all levels have paid attention to implementing many measures to propagate and popularize labor law and the Social Insurance Law to workers. However, the current forms of propaganda have not yet achieved the expected results.

In fact, legal consulting work currently mainly takes place at the Provincial Labor Federation Office and the Southeast Economic Zone Trade Union - far from concentrated enterprises, so the number of workers coming to directly consult on law is not large.

The forms of consulting implemented in the past were direct consulting, consulting by phone, consulting through policy dialogues right at the enterprise's headquarters. Although very effective, the number was not large.

The content of legal dissemination and education is still one-sided, not meeting the practical needs of union members and workers. Meanwhile, the number of workers who need to be informed and educated about the law is large, and many major policies of the union are not widely disseminated to workers and union members.

Propaganda, legal advice via text messages, facebook

The effectiveness of the propaganda work in the past time has not been as expected because the consulting location is far from the dormitory and living place of the workers, which is not convenient for workers to request advice and get answers directly. Workers do not have time to go to the consulting office during working hours, and after working hours they are too tired to think about participating in learning about the law.

Grasping this situation, the Provincial Labor Federation has just issued a pilot project to provide legal advice in industrial parks, disseminate laws via a text message system and open the Nghe An Provincial Labor Federation page on the social network Facebook.

Garment industry in Nghe An attracts many workers. Photo: PA

Accordingly, it is expected that the initial pilot will establish a "Nghe An Trade Union Legal Consulting Point" at Bac Vinh Industrial Park, located near the gates of enterprises and workers' dormitories, operating once a week at the end of working hours during the day.

The on-duty staff is responsible for providing on-site consultation on employees' requests, focusing on issues related to employees such as: Labor Code, Social Insurance Law, Employment Law, etc.

As of June 2018, Bac Vinh Industrial Park has 22 operating enterprises, with a total of 6,602 employees (5,039 female employees); the number of workers renting accommodation ranges from 1,500 to 1,700 people in 850 rented rooms. Therefore, providing legal consulting services in this area is expected to increase the position of the union in supporting workers.

The second solution is to disseminate the law to workers through text messages. Currently, in the province, there are 14 enterprises with trade unions with about 500 workers or more, with a total of 24,142 workers, of which 20,302 are union members and all use mobile phones. The provincial labor federation will negotiate with network operators to support trade unions in sending free text messages to workers.

Another highly anticipated solution is to provide legal policy consultation and dissemination via Facebook. Currently, the Provincial Federation of Labor has come up with ideas and implementation methods to soon introduce to workers./.