(Source: Internet)

Opportunities for female labourers

For Vietnamese labourers, including women workers, the AEC participation will enable them to benefit from both domestic labour market and AEC countries. In the domestic labour market, AEC integration will bring about more job opportunities and help to improve the quality of jobs. The integration will reel in more investments and technologies from outsiders while enabling the country’s deeper participation in global production and supply chains as well as offering broader labour mobility channels. It will open up more opportunities to develop career path, realize the implementation of labour standards in domestic businesses and basic rights of workers. Ensured welfare will make important contributions to improving the quality of jobs Vietnam offered right in its market.

On the other hand, flows of investments and technologies coming from developed countries in the region will push the structural shift from low-productivity economic sectors to higher-productivity sectors and allow stronger participation into the common value chains. This will create both pressures and opportunities for women labourers to improve their careers and change their jobs from the low-productivity sectors to secured ones in the higher-productivity sectors.

For regional labor markets, the AEC integration will generate favourable opportunities for Vietnamese labourers, including those for women labourers to have better jobs with better incomes in developed countries in the region and at the same time pool knowledge, skills and experience there, then participating in the global value chain. It is a good chance for Vietnamese labourers to “narrow the gap” of developing their career and start-up skills in comparison with those in other developed countries in the region. Initially, as agreed, AEC will allow a movement of labour relating to the eight occupations of engineering, nursing, architecture, medicine, dentistry, tourism, surveying and accountancy. To facilitate the mobility of skilled labourers in the region, ASEAN countries signed Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs), which allowed certificates of professional workers granted by the professional accreditation bodies in a country to be recognized by other countries in the region. The above-mentioned occupations see the participation of many female workers and are advantages of Vietnamese labourers.

Benefits to be generated by the movement of labour stem from:
Firstly, there are objective conditions arising from the development process, which come from uneven economic growths recorded in a country and other countries, in combination with industrialization and urbanization. This process has made the labour force, which moved from the agriculture sector to the non-agriculture sectors synchronize with rural migrants coming to urban areas. Subjective conditions of the development have created a “flow” of the movement of labour, making labourers active. Not all female workers have resigned themselves to their fate. Many wanted to have a better income and a better life so they have voluntarily joined in moving to work in urban areas or a country with higher development level. AEC generates good opportunities for those labourers who want to participate in these movements.      

Secondly, the movement of labour has been ruled by the market mechanism. The supply-demand rule has created “flows” and various segments of the labour market, enabling female workers from different groups to join in various “flows” and various sub-markets (management, middle-skilled, and technical jobs). However, socio-economic development levels, improvements of the market economy, the quality of labourers, and the “opening” of each region and each country varied, leading to differences in movement and movement capability. Therefore, the labour movement is always a process and the issue is how to make the best use of that process and the opportunities generated by the market economy and international integration.

Thirdly, the movements of labour are diversifying. Uneven economic development levels among regions and nations led to a variety of needs for human resources. Accordingly, there were different movements among groups of laborers, including those among non-skilled, middle-skilled and high-skilled labourers. For the skilled labourers, the movement differed inside the group and between different groups. For example, the demand for the skilled group will be coming from the service sector by this country or from the industrial manufacturing sector by the other country. The diversity of production needs and markets offered opportunities for female workers to choose to join the market segments of AEC which suit their occupational characteristics and capability.

Issues

Firstly, it deals with policies, institutions, and mechanisms. One of ASEAN’s principles is a consensus on all issues. It means an issue that is to be implemented in one country must be approved by all bloc members. Meanwhile, negotiations must be held between the two countries or a group of countries and must gain the consensus of negotiating parties. Regarding labour movements (migrant labour), ASEAN countries set up the ASEAN Committee on the Implementation of the ASEAN Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers (ACMW), giving it the responsibility for promoting and protecting the rights of migrant workers through the group compiling the ASEAN Consensus on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers and the ASEAN Forum on Migrant Labour (Ha Thi Minh Duc, 2017). ACMW’s priorities in 2016-2020 focused on developing the instrument to manage migrant labour, the flexibility of social security for migrant labourers, the protection and promotion of the rights of migrant laborers, and undocumented migration from the aspect of human trafficking. These are important issues that Vietnam should pay attention to as they are relating to the movement of female labourers.

The significance of the ASEAN Consensus to Vietnamese female labourers with regard to migrant labour:
The Consensus refers to basic issues of migrant workers. This will help Vietnamese female workers who plan to work in AEC labour markets fully understand their rights and legitimate benefits before they go there, during the time they work there, and after they leave the markets.   

The Consensus mentions to concrete responsibilities of the labourer-sending country as well as the labourer-receiving country in AEC. This is an important source of references for the labour management agencies of Vietnam during the process of reviewing and amending laws and policies relating to the dispatch of Vietnamese labourers to work abroad in general and in AEC in particular, as well as the management of foreigners working in Vietnam.

The Consensus provides an important basis for Vietnam and other partner countries to enhance cooperation in protecting the rights, especially protecting the body and incomes, of Vietnamese female workers working in AEC.

Secondly, under MRAs, ASEAN countries will recognize skills, experience, and certificates of the labourers in ASEAN, allowing them to work abroad. In addition to MRAs, the ASEAN Agreement on Movement of Natural Persons (MNP) and the ASEAN Comprehensive Investment Agreement (ACIA) simplified visa procedures for entrepreneurs in ASEAN. Goods and services traders, investors, entrepreneurs, contracted service providers, and intra-corporate transferees enjoy the right of having temporary cross-border stay. However, at present, only two MRAs have been fully executed. From the angle of gender equality, MRAs on the qualification of skilled workers offered sizable challenges to female labourers when the percentage of trained female labourers in almost all ASEAN countries is lower than that of men. On the other hand, five out of the eight occupations subject to mobility are using more male labourers than female peers and they are also offering fewer chances for female workers to join. Looked at the issue objectively, the education-training systems in AEC countries are different from each other so it needs time for the realization of the practice of mutual recognition, especially to less-developed countries. Only 100 engineers and 10 architects of Vietnam have so far had their skills recognized in other AEC countries.  

Thirdly, it is about the demand of the AEC labour market. The fact showed labourers working in the eight above-mentioned occupations who moved within AEC accounted for a meager percentage (around 1 percent of the total migrant labour) so the needs (in terms of the number) for workers in those eight occupations are not high in the near future. It can be said that supply is greater than demand in the eight occupations in the short term. Therefore, the competitiveness in the eight occupations is very high and despite “free movement”, Vietnamese female workers have not many advantages in this competition.

Fourthly, it is about some limitations of Vietnamese female workers. The ASEAN Economic Community highlights the free movement of skilled workers. However, the fact shows it’s hard to implement efficiently the right to the free movement of Vietnamese female workers and there are a few people who are capable of “moving freely” in the coming time. Looking at the minimal qualification frames for free movement and the current capacity of Vietnamese workers, it can be hard for Vietnamese female labourers to compete in the ASEAN labour market. For the eight said occupations, the professional and technical qualifications of female workers are limited. Taking the “nursing service” as example, up to 57.4 percent of Vietnamese female workers have “no professional and technical qualifications or their professional and technical qualification is at not the same level as those from other regional labour markets. Of them, only 2.5 percent held university and college degrees and 13.3 percent had vocational training school qualifications. According to the WB, Vietnam is facing a severe shortage of professional workers and high-skilled technicians and the quality of Vietnamese human resources is lower than that in other countries. In the WEF report 2018, the quality of Vietnam’s human resources ranked 70 among 100 countries and the quality of high-quality workforce ranked 81 among 100 countries. Vietnam is not ready for Industry 4.0, standing only above Cambodia among ASEAN countries. Vietnamese female workers met not only difficulties in professional skills, but also a lack of soft, teamwork, and foreign language skills. The flexibility, communications skills and teamwork are essential elements for joining in the dynamic ASEAN labour market. However, these are hindrances to female laborers in particular and Vietnamese workers in general.

Fifthly, it’s about organization. Vietnam is yet proactive in preparing its workforce for the movement in the eight occupations in terms or personnel and organization, which will affect the movement capability of female workers. Vietnamese businesses are seemingly not ready for this movement. There were a lack of coordination among ministries and relevant agencies of Vietnam in preparing the workforce and in participating in negotiations and the signing, thus having certain effects on the movement capability of female workers in particular and Vietnamese workers in general in the AEC labour market. The domestic and regional labour markets require labourers to meet profession standards, however, the national professional skill standard system is being built and initially heading to regional and global standards. This will certainly impact the movement capability of female workers when there is no compatibility in terms of professional skill standards between Vietnam and other countries in the region.  

As such, to enable Vietnamese female workers’ movement in the AEC labour market, the workers themselves need to be pro-actively prepared well in professional kills, soft skills, and psychology while authorities and sectors need to reform institutions, policies, as well as coordination in the implementation work.

International Cooperation Department