Regional minimum salary to increase from January 1, 2018

Starting from January 1, 2018, employees shall be offered regional minimum salary promotion in accordance with Decree No. 141/2017/ND-CP of the government. To elaborate the regulations, reporter of Binh Duong Newspaper interviewed Pham Van Tuyen, the Deputy Director of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs.

- Could you please clarify the subjects of the regulations?

- Decree No. 141/2017/ND-CP stipulating on regional minimum salary for employees of employment contracts in accordance with Labor Law, governing enterprises, collectives, joint collectives, cooperation groups, farms, households, individuals, other organizations of Vietnam employing workers, international organizations and agencies employing workers excluding the governance of international charters that SR of Vietnam is a member.

Promoted with salary, workers are more delight to work

- What shall the regional minimum salary be specifically applied in Binh Duong, sir?

- The Decree stipulated on 4 regions of minimum monthly salary accordingly for VND 3,980,000 for Region I, VND 3,530,000 Region II, VND 3,090,000 Region III, and VND 2,760,000 Region IV. Under the Decree from January 1, 2018 on the new monthly salary line should be VND 180,000-230,000 higher than the current one. Considering the Decree, Binh Duong should have Thu Dau Mot City, Thuan An Town, Di An Town, Tan Uyen Town, Ben Cat Town, Bau Bang District, and Bac Tan Uyen District in Region I which has minimum salary line of VND 3,980,000 a month; Phu Giao District and Dau Tieng District of Region II at VND 3,530,000 a month.

The regional minimum salary line is for enterprises and employees to agree upon adjustment of payroll, payments, and salary stated in employment contracts and reasonable correlation with training and legal regulations.

The minimum salary to be paid to a trained employee including training by the company or the employee himself but being allocated to position of training requirements should be at least 7% higher than regional minimum salary. For instant, Region I of VND 3,980,000 + (3,980,000 x 7%) = VND 4,258,600; Region II of VND 3,530,000 + (3,530,000 x 7%) = VND 3,777,100

On administering regional minimum salary, enterprises are not allowed to cut off or reduce allowances to employees working overtime, in night shifts, in laboring and risky environment, and other allowances required by laws. The allowances, additional payments and bonuses regulated by the enterprises shall be in accordance with their employment contracts, collective labor agreements or regulations of such enterprises. The process of constructing and adjusting payrolls, salary payments, and labor norms should be consulted by the employer with collective representative of its employees and submitted to local State’s managing authority with public announcement at the workplace before administering. The gap of salary tiers should be encouraging employees to improve their qualifications, experience and develop talents.

- How has the Decree implemented in Binh Duong and is there any difference from other provinces and cities, sir?

- Recently, we organized a training workshop on the implementation of the Decree for domestic and foreign enterprises. Participants in the conference included business owners, leaders of the executive committee of trade unions and human resources of enterprises. To date, most enterprises have publicly announced plans to adjust wages to employees. In particular, the grassroots trade union organizations shall coordinate with the employers in disseminating and informing the laborers of the adjustment of their wages, grasping and promptly settling the proposals, questions and suggestions of employees, not to let conflicts of wage lead to collective labor disputes. When the enterprise adjusts wages according to the Decree, there will be 3 cases: enterprises having wage scales, enterprises having no salary scales; and, enterprises have applied the minimum wage level higher than the Decree regulation is not required to adjust. However, we encourage these businesses to discuss with the grassroots union executive committee to adjust the salary to be consistent with the common ground. We recommend that businesses clarify between raising wages and adjusting wages. These two tasks must be separated and implemented in a clear and transparent manner to avoid misunderstanding for workers in order to limit possible labor disputes.

- Thank you!

Interviewed by Kim Ha – Translated by Vi Bao