Twenty-five Taiwan businesses in Vietnam have been affected by a recent wave of strikes started by Vietnamese workers demanding pay hikes, Ministry of Economic Affairs officials said yesterday.
However, the officials said they expect the strikes to come to an end soon following intervention by the Vietnamese government, which has announced that the minimum wage for local workers would be raised starting on Feb. 1.
They said that the ministry is working closely with the Vietnamese government and Taiwanese businesses in Vietnam in the hope that the dispute can be resolved as soon as possible to lessen the losses to the businesses.
According to tallies by the ministry, the strikes affected 59 foreign-owned factories in Vietnam between Dec. 28 and Jan. 8, of which 42.37 percent are Taiwanese businesses.
Of the 25 Taiwan factories affected, three saw production facilities damaged by the workers and two others had their gates vandalized, the tallies show.
While seven of the factories resumed operations last Friday, the remaining factories are planning to resume operations on Monday, ministry officials said.
Officials at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Ho Chi Minh City said that Taiwanese businesses have suffered the greatest impact from the strikes among all foreign-owned businesses in Vietnam, mainly because the largest number of foreign projects in Vietnam are from Taiwan.
As of the end of last month, there were 1,408 Taiwanese investment projects in Vietnam, accounting for 23.79 percent of the total 5,918 foreign investment projects, they said.
They said that the strikes had caused a domino effect among Taiwanese-owned factories after some Taiwanese businesses made compromises with their workers, which encouraged workers in other factories to ask for similar treatment.
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