TO DISTRIBUTE TO WORKING ENVIRONMENT AND CONDITIONS PROMOTION IN CURRENT PROCESS OF ECONOMIC INTEGRATION

1. Preface

The socio-economic development and also politic fluctuation in the world in recent decades have partly changed opinions on human responsibility for society and nature. In addition, the global economic crisis has created a range of ominous consequences, in the situation enterprises should have their own strategies in order to raise up their competitiveness and well implement corporate social responsibility (CSR), distribute to create healthy business environment in the new period.

2. Situation of CSR implementation through business management in Vietnam

The CSR has just implemented in Vietnam for recent 5-7 years, it has mainly conducted in garment and leather & foot wear enterprises due to goods export needs and the important role of these sectors to the national economy.

The first project on this field known as “SAVPOT – tri-parties mechanism for countries in the South Asia and Vietnam” was conducted by ILO from 2000 to 2002. In the framework of the project, management model “Cooperation and dialogue in enterprise” had been experimentally applied in 06 enterprises by Gender Office for Employment under Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

In fact, the information and propaganda activities have just implemented since 2002. The national conference “Corporated social responsibility and national competitiveness” hosted by MOLISA with the coordination of World Bank in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city in December 2002 would be considered as the first popularization activity of the Government.

During 2006-2007, NILP had conducted a research subject on setting up CSR through OSH and worker health care. The subject took out 5 following main conclusions:

– Most enterprises had not been aware of meaning, objective and effect of CSR.

– Enterprises had not concerned CSR in which OSH and worker health care guarantee were taken into account, it then caused labour productivity gradually decreased, workers had not had strong attachment to enterprises. As a result, the quality of the product was bad and enterprise lost their competitive capacity.

– Enterprises which understood the problem and the necessary were confused and did not know how to set up CSR for their own business.

– The implementation of worker health care and working environment & conditions improvement was precarious.

– The Government authority agencies had not paid much attention on this issue. Many regulation documents were not appropriated or incompatible any more.

Setting up CSR in order to assure the stable development of the enterprise, improve living standard and working environment & conditions for workers. One of the CSR concerned contents has been paid much attention is OSH work, healthcare and environmental guarantee. Thus, this article mentions social responsibility form the angle of OSH and EP field. Among some researches conducted in the period 2004-2008 of NILP at over 1000 enterprises showed that:

2.1. Working environment and conditions

– Periodical working environment monitoring: by interviewing enterprises’ owners showed that 53.3% of enterprises had fully conducted annual periodical working environment monitoring in accordance with the law in which enterprises in the South hold 92.3%; enterprises in the North hold 36,1%. In contrast, about ¼ of inspected enterprises had not yet conducted the monitoring of which the mass of number belonged to the North (30.6%), the Central (27.3%) and the South (7.7%) respectively.

– The state of machinery and production equipments at enterprises: according to the subjective assessment of the employers, machinery and production equipments at inspected enterprises which were quite old held 62%, modern held 33.9% and out-of-date held 4.1%. Among the inspected enterprises, the percentage of modern machinery at the North’s enterprises was the highest (43.6%) in which some enterprises had 100% modern machinery. In the South the rate of old machinery was 70% and out-of-date was 7% holding the highest percentage in comparison to other regions.

– PPEs: The rate of appropriated PPEs equipped subject at the North’s enterprises was the highest (87.9%), approximately the same in the Central and the South (65.8% and 63.9%). 15% of interviewed subject said that they were equipped PPEs but insufficient, most of them belonged to enterprises in the South (33.7%). Especially, 6.5% of interviewed subject said that they were not equipped PPEs, most of them belonged to enterprises in the Central (18.2%).

2.2. The situation of work-related accidents and occupational health

+According to the work-related accident statistics of the period 2004-2008, in the whole country it had happened 26.837 work-related accidents of which 27.887 injured cases, 2.644 fatal cases and 2.899 deaths.

+Statistics on health of 2008:1.5 million workers had provided health checking in which 28.9% having respirator diseases, 10.3% having eye diseases, 9.1% having joint-skeleton diseases and 8.7% having cardiovascular diseases. There were only 67.000 workers had been provided occupational disease checking in which 9.246 workers were diagnosed with occupational diseases (13.8%), silicosis (67.5%) and occupational deaf (16.8%).

+ Absent days caused by work-related accidents: 27152 days per year. Material losses caused by work-related accidents and occupational diseases were 21.213 billion VND per year in which compensate expense paid for the relative (in fatal cases) was 12.625 billion VND, property losses was 659.3 million VND.

Some main reasons are:

+ Poor awareness of employers and employees, OSH training courses had not provided, tools and equipments were not safe enough, labour safety processes and methods were not provided.

+ Working environment and conditions were not ensured.

3. Solutions for the improvement of working environment & conditions and management model

One of the most challenges which Vietnamese enterprises have to cope with is the competitiveness, not only in the field of export but also in the domestic market.

Some suggested solutions for management and model of management system as follows:

– One of those important chain of solutions is well conduct social responsibility, concern to OSH & EP in order to produce “clean products”.

– It is necessary to set up a completed and compatible legal environment especially pay attention on legal documents and sanction punishment for health care and working environment & conditions guarantee for workers.

– Rebuilding and promulgating more norms and standards on OSH and health care for workers, environmental protection which are suitable in this stage and providing strict sanctions in order to implement those norms and regulation

– Continuously promulgating further list of work-related diseases which are insured by the State. It is necessary to have strict regulations on periodical health checking for workers and also rebuild the criterion for health classification.

– Inspecting and supervising enterprises in completely implementing all the requirements of OSH&EP law.

– Raising awareness by strengthening the propaganda of social responsibility knowledge.

– Intensifying researches and applications scientific and technological solution to ensure safety, improve working environment and conditions and workers’ health, so as to be appropriate to the conditions of Vietnamese economy and people.

– Enterprises should apply model of management system to well conduct social responsibility, that is PDCA model which includes major steps as Plan, Do, Check and Action.

Model of management system

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