Need to supplement regulations to better protect workers' rights
Speaking at the conference, Vice Chairman Ngo Duy Hieu emphasized the reality of unresolved rights of employees, especially in terms of salary, social insurance, and health insurance when businesses go bankrupt. One of the reasons is that there are still many gaps in the legal corridor to resolve the rights of employees in this case. Therefore, it is necessary to give opinions on handling enterprises in unpaid wages, social insurance, and unemployment insurance of employees; mechanisms to resolve employees' rights; rights and responsibilities of trade union organizations.
A representative of the Ho Chi Minh City Labor Federation said that in the past 5-7 years, there have been many cases of enterprises stopping operations, going bankrupt or having their owners flee, leaving serious consequences: Employees lose their jobs, have been unpaid wages for many months, not being able to pay social insurance, leading to inability to close books, loss of health insurance benefits, unemployment...
One of the typical cases is Bumjin Vina Co., Ltd. (Vinh Loc Industrial Park, Binh Tan. From 25 Tet 2018, Mr. Park Kye Ho - director of the company left without traces, until the end of the year, the workers were discovered not to be paid and the owner had "disappeared". Psychology of employees, both actively supporting material, and representing the employee's collective struggle for legal rights.
Based on reality, giving opinions on the draft Law on Bankruptcy, the Ho Chi Minh City Labor Federation agreed to add a regulation on temporary suspension of exit for legal representatives of enterprises and cooperatives immediately after the court accepted bankruptcy or recovery procedures. This measure will help promptly prevent business owners from fleeing abroad, ensuring that they stay to fulfill their responsibilities to employees and the bankruptcy settlement process. This is to proactively prevent employers from fleeing, preserve business assets to resolve the rights of employees.
The representative of Ho Chi Minh City Labor Confederation also emphasized that it is necessary to supplement the regulations on better protection of employees in case the enterprise is insolvent. In fact, when the enterprise bankrupted or the owner fled, workers often suffered heavy disadvantages of salaries, allowances, social insurance, health insurance .... City Labor Federation also pointed out that the law has no clear criteria to determine "the owner of the business escape" and there is no regulations on the process of handling assets in these cases ...
Confusion in practice
In addition to the achieved results, according to the Report summarizing the implementation of the 2014 Bankruptcy Law, there are still some problems and inadequacies in the bankruptcy law related to protecting the rights of employees.
Analyzing some problems and shortcomings, the representative of the Supreme People's Court said that there are no specific instructions on continuing to handle social insurance debts after accepting the application to open bankruptcy proceedings. The regime for employees is only resolved after the Court issues a decision to declare the company bankrupt and settles social insurance, ... affecting the employees' rights.
According to the provisions of Clause 2, Article 77 of the Bankruptcy Law, employees' representatives and union representatives authorized by employees have the right to attend the creditor conference. However, the Bankruptcy Law does not specifically regulate the procedures for sending representatives to employees, causing difficulties and confusion in practice when employees authorize representatives to attend the creditor conference.
In addition, according to Article 27 of the Bankruptcy Law, the petition for opening bankruptcy proceedings must have evidence to prove other due debts. However, for employees and organizations representing employees' rights, proving other due debts when submitting a request to open bankruptcy proceedings is a barrier for them to exercise their rights...
