Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui

Vietnam's labour costs are rising, despite the continual economic downturn which has stunted employment across the nation.

Vietnam during the first half of 2009 had sent 33,435 workers abroad, over 30 percent of the year's target but down 17 percent year-on-year, reported Ministry of Labour, Invalid and Social Affairs' Overseas Labour Management Department.

PRAGUE — For Trieu Dinh Van, 25, the long journey two years ago from the rice paddies of northern Vietnam to a truck-welding factory in eastern Bohemia was supposed to provide an economic lifeline. Instead Mr. Van, the son of poor, peasant farmers, is jobless, homeless and heavily indebted in a faraway land.

HANOI — Chinese products and workers, rather than those from Vietnam, are being used for key industrial projects in the fast-developing country, a report quoted top officials as saying Saturday.

Hanoi - One construction worker was killed and another seriously injured in Ho Chi Minh City when a span of the bridge they were building collapsed, a doctor said Wednesday.

Hanoi - The global economic slowdown will cause job losses in Vietnam in 2009 up to five times higher than those in 2008, government officials said Monday.

Hanoi - Panasonic Corp confirmed Friday that it was shedding jobs at its factories in Vietnam, joining a raft of companies laying off workers there as the economy slows. Panasonic Vietnam general director Shinya Abe said the company had offered workers at its plant outside Hanoi a "voluntary resignation plan" at the end of January but did not yet know how many would accept the offer.

Vietnam was hit by a record 762 labour strikes last year, many of them in textile and footwear plants, as workers struggled with costs amid spiralling inflation, a labour union official said Thursday.

HANOI - The decrease in Vietnam's growth rate this year could entail a loss of 300,000 jobs or 0.65% of the labour force, according to the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA).

Hanoi - The number of wildcat strikes in Vietnam has increased sharply compared with last year, a government official said Tuesday. "This year, we have seen about a 30-per-cent increase in wildcat strikes compared with last year," said Pham Minh Huan, Director of the Salary Policy Department of the Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs.

PHNOM PENH — Chantha said there was nothing else she could do in Cambodia but become a prostitute. "If you don't even have a dollar in your pocket to buy rice, how can you bear looking at your starving relatives?" she said.

The wildcat strike of more than 200 workers from a company in the central Quang Ngai Province escalated Thursday.

Hanoi - Vietnamese authorities have warned South Korean firms to cease violating labour laws if they want to continue their Vietnamese operations, a senior government official said Thursday.

HO CHI MINH City - A survey done at 34 textile and garment, leather-shoe, seafood processing and other factories in 10 provinces has shown that labour policies for women workers are impractical, Vietnam News Agency (VNA) reported Thursday.

HANOI - Some 2,000 workers at two foreign-owned companies have gone on strike, demanding better pay and allowances, company and union officials said Friday. More than 1,400 workers at Valley View Vietnam, a Taiwanese-owned garment company based in the central city of Danang, have been on strike since Thursday, demanding a monthly petrol allowance of 100,000 dong (6 dollars) and an increase in their daily meal allowance.