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Mekong Delta seafood packers crying for workers
A lot of seafood packers in Soc Trang province are trying to recruit workers. However, very few workers find the pay or the working conditions appealing.
Crying for workers
A banner proclaiming a need for 500 workers hung outside Ut Xi Seafood Processing Company on July 10. Inside, Deputy General Director Nguyen Tuan Anh complained that “we offer a lot of preferences for workers, especially local Khmer minority women. However, we have recruited only a few workers in the last month .”
Meanwhile, Do Ngoc Tai, Deputy General Director of Kim Anh Company, which needs another 300 workers, said that the company’s advertisement has been broadcast on TV for a month already. The result to date: 30 applications.
Sao Ta Import-Export Seafood Company seeks 700 new workers, Phuong Nam Company needs 600 workers, Stapimex 500 workers. All of them offer working conditions they describe as ‘attractive.’ Candidates only need to have good health and be able to read and write. Workers will be paid 1.2 million dong per month ($70) and wages will be paid weekly. Yet, would-be workers don’t show up.
Workers don’t want to be squeezed out
Thach Thi Thu Suong of An My village said that she once worked for Ut Xi Company. “I worked at the shrimp shelling shop. I only earned 1.2 million dong a month. Sometimes I had to work overtime, up to 12 hours, and got an extra 5,000 dong per hour,” she said.
With such an income, Suong said, she had only a few hundred thousand dong left every month after she paid for meals and other basic needs. If Suong stayed home from work sick, her pay would be docked. “Sometimes I had to borrow money from relatives to pay for medicine when I was sick”.
Lieu Thi Nga of Lieu Tu village works for Ut Xi. She said that in principle she earned 1.2 million dong per month, but some months she gets only 500,000 dong, ba rely enough to buy food.
“When they (companies) need us, they entreat us to work for them. When they don’t need us any more, they throw us away,” Suong said, adding that workers have become tired of working for seafood workshops which squeeze workers to produce more and more. Workers dare not to work for seafood companies any more, because of the ‘sweatshop’ conditions.
Le Van Nhon of Ke Thanh village related that workers have 30 minutes for lunch. Work finishes at 3 pm. Every worker by then has stood for 10 hours continuously and is exhausted. “We go to bed as soon as we get to our room. We do not have strength to do anything else.”
The biggest worry of seafood workers is occupational disease. Tran Thi Na Ri of Phu My village, who once worked for Sao Ta Company, related that she got headaches and other diseases when she worked for processing shop, where it was too cold. Na Ri said that a lot of her colleagues also could not bear the severe working conditions, and had to quit.
Seafood companies now have a very redoubtable rival, the owners of rice granaries. Suong is now working for a rice granary and gets 70-80,000 dong per day.
Tran Thi Thu in Tai Van village said that that she is harvesting rice and she can get some 200,000 dong per day, therefore, she does not even think of returning to a seafood company.
VietNamNet, TP
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