Talking to reporters, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thuy - Chairwoman of the Trade Union of Hung Yen University of Technology and Education (Vietnam Education Union) - said that she highly appreciates the spirit of innovation, frankness and strategic thinking with a "new era" vision of the draft.
The drafting committee has not avoided the actual "bottlenecks", especially recognizing the confusion of the grassroots apparatus and the concurrent work pressure of the trade union officials. However, for the draft to truly become a "guideline" to create new vitality, I propose to add mechanisms that are more practical and give more power and resources directly to the grassroots level," Ms. Thuy said.
Regarding the mechanism for protecting and treating grassroots trade union officials, Ms. Thuy emphasized that this is the most core issue. Currently, nearly 100% of grassroots trade union officials are part-time. "We are facing "double" pressure: Both having to excellently complete the professional KPI of the unit and having to play well the role of "leader", representing the struggle to protect the rights of workers before the employers themselves. Without a substantive protection mechanism, it is very difficult to find people who dare to think, dare to do, dare to collide," Ms. Thuy stated.
From that reality, Ms. Thuy proposed that it is necessary to include in the document stronger legal commitments and actions from the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor level such as: Supplementing the mechanism "Building special protection facilities and legal risk and employment support funds for grassroots trade union officials"; researching and piloting a model of paying responsibility/salary allowances to grassroots trade union officials through an independent account of the superior trade union, avoiding trade union officials being completely financially dominated by employers.
Regarding digital transformation and application of artificial intelligence (AI), grassroots officials are having quite a hard time with administrative nghiệp vụ due to the use of many platforms and software. The goal of "100% digitizing data" is correct but will create a large burden if there are no smart tools to support. From there, Ms. Thuy proposed to focus on investing in building a single application platform, interconnected nationwide. This application is not only for data management but must integrate AI to support grassroots officials in automating reporting and answering laws for workers, helping to liberate labor for trade union officials to have time to go deeper and closely follow the masses.
Regarding proposals to adjust the wording and structure, in Section VIII. 1 (Breakthrough Stage): It is proposed to amend the First Breakthrough Stage to: "Improving the quality of the contingent of trade union officials, especially full-time officials and grassroots trade union presidents, in parallel with a worthy protection and remuneration mechanism".
In Section I.4 (Lessons learned): Proposal to supplement the lesson: "Promoting the spirit of self-reliance, flexibility and on-the-spot rapid response capacity of grassroots trade unions in the face of crises and incidents that directly threaten workers' lives".
