Industry 4.0: Textile workers will be unemployed, won’t they?

According to the ILO, 86% of Viet Nam's garment workers are affected. Photo: Phan Thu.

Worry of falling into "catastrophe"

At the seminar on the morning of August 18 with title: "Industrial Revolution 4.0: Trends and impact on Vietnam's exports", Mr. Can Van Luc, an economist, said the industrial revolution 4.0 would bring more benefits for exporters such as: Reduction of transaction costs, management, increase of market access, new business opportunities, application of modern technology and more importantly, opportunities for innovation and breakthrough

However, accompanying these opportunities is the enormous challenges for businesses. According to Luc, an approximation of 60% of export and import transactions will be digitized in the next 10 years but Vietnam currently obtains only 3-5%. While the industrial revolution 4.0 is a time of artificial intelligence, robots, the internet of things, nanotechnology, molecular biology, genetics ... when the information technology develops, technological risks for business will increase.

In addition, the challenge of human resources is also a problem for the enterprises because the industry 4.0 requires high-quality human resources with skills, level, technology knowledge ... at the higher level

It is likely to clearly see these challenges to the textile and the garment and the footwear sectors that use the most labor force

A garment enterprise questioned the speakers at the workshop, how do you envisage the challenge of Industry 4.0 for the textile and garment industry? "I imagine Vietnam's textile industry will disappear in the next 10 years "every family has 3D printers.” what solution should the textile industry do so as not to fall into the "tragedy" like the traditional taxi of Uber and Grab now, "he shared.

The same of this question, Mr. Can Van Luc said, many textile enterprises which he met also shared this concern. According to the ILO, 86% of Viet Nam's textile workers are affected, but that does not mean they will not be unemployed at once.

“There are a lot of sources of alternatives job and now there is a change in the labor structure of the current textile industry. For example, in the five current stages, Vietnam mainly processes, but have we fully involved design and distribution yet? Currently, Vietnam mainly outsourced, these three stages have not been joined in, "Luc said.

Consideration of human resource training recognizing the difficulties that Vietnamese enterprises will encounter, but Tran Dinh Thien, Director of Vietnam Institute of Economics, said that the job loss of 2 million textile workers is "tragic", but we also have to accept the change. It is important that the business must be prepared to change.

An expert noted that Samsung has installed about 1,500 robots without reducing their workforce, they have arranged other jobs, their growth is still 15-20%, ensuring works for employees.

"The re-training of human resources must be considered right now, at the same time the enterprises also need to analyze and evaluate to issue their business strategies," Luc said.

Mr. Do Trung Hieu, Director of the joint-stock company of Smartlines JSC - Vietnam IOT Alliance, urged the enterprises to quickly develop strategies and plans to apply the industry 4.0 so as to solve their owned problems of business production; Waiting for complete technology is too late to change.

However, in order to do this well, the businesses should look for reliable partners that provide technology solutions and implementation consulting. On the other hand, they build a set of third-party technology vendors because the industry 4.0 is the transition from one vendor model to multi-vendors of integrated technology paradigm. Since then, the enterprise establishes a professional research group on innovation and application of industry 4.0 on the scale of the whole enterprise, basing on the open culture of changes and experiments.

At the same point of the view, Thien said that the key is to change and think about the business. Besides, the policy must also be changed to suit the reality without the "extension".

Mr. Thien offered that the Ministry of Industry and Trade should have a list of goods affected by 4.0 and know how the technology and import competitors approach 4.0 to take measures to respond.

Up to now, Vietnam has been slow to approach this revolution of the industry 4.0 while many countries are fighting for this revolution. The opponent is winning us in productivity, we will be backward about the market like China is the typical example, "Thien said.