Dissident labour activism in Vietnam

Abstract

Scholars of Vietnam have studied different forms of labour resistance such as wildcat strikes, petitions, complaints, work stoppages, and boycotts, with which workers demand higher wages and pensions, overall better working conditions, and the implementation of workers’ rights. This article pays attention to the small, yet not negligible group of dissident labour activists, who are subjected to much harsher state repression compared to labour resistance in and around the workplace. This article asks: What makes dissident labour activism a (real or perceived) threat to the state? A common and widely accepted explanation refers to the nature of the demands of dissidents, which includes independent trade unions, democratisation, and regime change. This article digs deeper and finds that dissident labour activists function as agents of an emerging epistemological third space, which permits the revitalisation of hidden knowledges about labour rights, the reclamation of the silenced idea of independent trade unions and the co-existence of critique of the status quo and imagination of an alternative future, which together threaten to endanger the Communist Party of Vietnam’s political legitimacy and, by implication, capital utilisation.