Overtime ceiling should be increased and regulated by year

	Draft revised Labour Code: Enterprises still want to increase working overtime
	Employees and employers must “share in the same boat”
	Fisheries enterprises propose to keep current working hours

From the perspective of an enterprise with a large number of employees and seasonal characteristics, what do you think about the current regulations on working overtime?

Minh Phu is a fishery group with about 15,000 employees working in a closed value chain. Minh Phu currently has 14 member companies operating mainly in the areas of seed production, shrimp farming, supply chain and export processing. Currently, seafood export enterprises face a number of difficulties such as technical barriers and social security policies. This is mostly caused by the provisions of the current Labour Code.

Currently, in order to export processed seafood products, in addition to the conditions of workshops and ensuring food safety and hygiene, businesses must also follow social responsibility policies. Foreign partners will hire a third party to assess the social security of the business. It will assess the compliance of enterprises with Vietnam’s Labour Law.

Every year, customers evaluate Minh Phu through dozens of different social security standards. If Minh Phu violates the standards, customers will not buy goods and the company will have to wait for the next year to reassess. Therefore, if the Labour Law is not appropriate, enterprises will be damaged.

Has Minh Phu experienced any difficulties related to overtime?

I would like to affirm that there is no enterprise that wants to work overtime, but enterprises require laborers to work overtime to get the orders completed in time because for the fish and shrimp industry in particular and agriculture in general, it is all seasonal.

In the harvest of shrimp, fish or other agricultural products, farmers sell a lot to the plants. These days, if the factory receives all the farmers' products for processing, it will violate overtime hours. If the enterprise only buys a sufficient number of products from farmers and refuses the remainder, what will the consequences be? The farmer brought five tons of shrimp, we could not take only three tons and return two.

But if you get it all, violating an extra hour in a month is a serious fault. Customers will not buy your product and you must wait until the next assessment to fix it. While the fee for each evaluation is not less than $3,000. Working overtime to resolve all farmers' products is illegal.

In order to deliver on time to customers, overtime is required, causing violations. Enterprises are also not keen on the working overtime because they have to pay at least 150% for normal overtime, 200% for overtime at night; 300% for overtime on holidays and 200% for weekends. When organizing overtime, our price will increase by 20-30%, although the production cost is higher, we have to sell at the normal price.

In the latest draft of the revised Labor Code before it is submitted to the National Assembly, the drafting agency has revised the regulations on overtime hours. What is your opinion on this issue?

Through decades of practice, the shrimp industry has plentiful raw materials for 3-5 months, which needs overtime. In other months, it takes less than 8 hours, even it they run out of material in 5-working hours. Minh Phu currently has 4 shrimp processing factories, in order to run at full capacity, Minh Phu needs 20,000 employees. Despite high income and many preferential policies, Minh Phu only employs about 13,000 people, lacking 35% in production capacity. For these reasons, I propose the State to extend the working overtime rules, so we have the opportunity to handle goods for farmers. This will remove the requirement on overtime hours by week and by month as in other countries around the world. For example, in Japan, the number of overtime hours must not exceed 600, leaving businesses flexible in organizing overtime. Vietnamese enterprises are "dead" by the provisions of the number of overtime hours by week and by month.

In fact, working 10 hours a day does not affect health as well as labor productivity. Depending on the source of the material in the season, not every day there are raw materials for working 10 hours a day. Moreover, business owners also have to balance daily jobs to ensure long-term health for workers to ensure productivity and quality. Since then, the enterprise has developed sustainably. On the other hand, workers also need to work overtime to receive additional wages to cover their living expenses.

Customs are ready to work overtime to promote exporting pork

In fact, workers work at our factory from 8-12 hours per day, then they continue to do their part-time job at other companies in the same industry for a few more hours to earn VND3-5 million per month. So their total income is up to VND12-14 million per month. So they will be tired the next day (this number is over 30%). Thus, there is a need to work overtime to have more income. However, if working overtime in our enterprise, we must consider to help them increase income and good health to work long term.