The show is about to start and great excitement can
bee seen on the faces of the hundreds of young workers who can hardly wait on
their seats. They just finished their shift at 5pm, twenty minutes ago. Even
though they are tired, the prospect of a musical show in the hall of their
factory nearby the small cafeteria, where there is usually nothing to do after
work, rekindled their energy. The organisers of this show is the Center for
Young Workers Support, which is related to the local authorities. “The show is
also sponsored by Phu Thinh mobile phone company and it is free of charge for
the factory owner, and of course for the workers”, Dao Quang Dung says. Dung is
the head of the Center for Young Workers Support of the district. He is very
confident in his mission and in the success of the show tonight. “These workers
are young and yet nothing is ready for them. There is little entertainement
after work and they can be bored. We ususally organise four shows every month,
each time in a different factory”, Dung continues.
In fact, companies have been putting in place more and
more after-work activities recently at the workers request. The shoe company
where the show takes place tonight in Binh Duong has installed two karaoke
rooms (open until 10pm) and English courses are also organised for the workers.
Sometimes the workers would go on daytrips and picnics into the nearby
countryside or even in Vung Tau or Phan Thiet.
Welcome to the industrial age
Vietnam’s economic heart lies in the numerous Chi Minh
City industrial zones : Long Thanh, Binh Duong, Bien Hoa, Tan Tao…
Workers see the factory as a home far from home where
they work and spend their spare time together. Tens of thousand young men and
women are employed by the factories today. In average; there are around 15,000
workers living and working in one industrial area and around 130 factories in
the fields of garment , textile, package, aquapoduct, shoe, etc.
The emergence of internal migrant population is a
direct result of Vietnam’s economic reforms in 1989 (Doi Moi) and WTO
membership, coupled with the changes in urban and rural living regulations.
Although an old residency regulation limited each
person to strictly urban or rural residency and commerce, reforms in the 1990s
allowed farmers to sell part of their produce on the market, therefore
permitting them to supplement their produce sales to the government and gain
more economic independence. The eased residency restrictions coincided with the
general economic open door policy in the 1995s and 2000s.
This resulted in new competitive challenges for local
and international firms and forced them to seek increasing quantities of cheap
labor. Thus, the migrant boom was born, and young Vietnamese migrated to the
new industrial zones in the South, hoping to prosper from their country
economic growth. Today, thousands of factories are worked by hundreds of
thousand migrant laborers which are crucial to the growth of the national
economy.
The factory life
The working day at the factory begins at 7am or 8am.
There are around three breaks during the day, including an hour lunch break.
Workers go home at 5pm or 6pm unless they want to take an extra shift.
Many workers come from small farming towns, form every
part of Vietnam. They form a new kind of society, a mosaic of young people from
different origins. For these young laborers, farming is the vocation of their
parents, and since most of them is better educated and more prepared to enter
the workforce, they are eager to leave their homes for the excitement of the
southern booming towns.
In many cases, the financial circumstances of workers’
families force them to migrate so they can support their families. Especially
after the rise in the cost of living that came with the economic opening of the
2000s, many families could no longer afford for all of their children to stay
at home. Moreover, many children go out to work once they are grown so they can
send money back home in a display of gratitude to their parents for birthing
and raising them. “We feel like we have “debts” towards our parents”, Kim Thanh
says. Kim Thanh is a 19 year-old young girl originally from a small town in
center Vietnam, and she moved in the South two years ago. She is sitting next
by her boyfriend. They met at the factory. “When my debt will be finally paid,
maybe I will return home and settle down to start a family”, she explains. When
asked if she would start a family with her boyfriend, she does not want to
answer.
In addition to these financial motivations, indeed,
many migrant workers leave home in search of independence and excitement, given
that for most young Vietnamese, the idle life of the countryside can sometimes
be as crippling as conservatism and poverty.
Mixed feelings
However, in the case of many workers, the joy of
earning good money in factory is quickly overshadowed by harsh working
conditions and chronic homesickness. The early 2008 massive strikes
demonstrated the uneasiness of workers life in these industrial zones. Assembly
line workers usually put in thirteen-hour workdays with two breaks for meals,
and typically earn about one hundred US dollars a month.
Besides the stresses of work on the production line,
many workers also suffer from nostalgia and even depression caused by
homesickness and the general lack of personal contact in manufacturing parks.
“Friends are hard to make and even harder to keep in the factory, mostly
because of the inherent lifestyle. People move from one factory to another,
they are trying jobs and when they are stisfied they stay in the factory”, Viet
Anh, 23 year-old, explains. “There is a strong division of workers into
regional networks of workers from the same province, city, or even village”, he
continues. “I am from the South. Before, I was sharing the dormitory with
Northern workers. I could not get along with them and reversely. I didn’t like
the way they talked, the jokes, their food. I am now living in a room that I
rent to a ricegrower family nearby the factory. This family and my neighbours
are Souther people so it is ok”.
These connections can be the difference between
finding a way to begin the job search, choosing a good factory, or surviving
life as a migrant. However, although these regional associations make migrant
life much more secure and enjoyable for the workers involved, they create a
much harsher working environment, as workers identify each other less by name
than by their province or country of origin.
The MC appears on stage and the show finally starts in
an incredible noise. Just like any other youngsters, Kim Thanh, Viet anh and
the other workers shout and laugh, forgetting for a while their hard life,
homesickness, or the company corporate messages like “good and hard work is the
duty of every worker” written on banners hung everywhere in the factory. Quizz
games, singers and clowns on stage fill the night while the show successfully carries
on, just as Dung predicted.
