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Do trade-labour linkages improve the conditions and rights of workers in low-wage countries? We consider this question in Vietnam, a market economy with socialist orientation that has seen rapid growth in export manufacturing and foreign direct investment, while signing regional trade agreements, which include labour rights provisions, with high-income trading partners. Our paper focuses on two such agreements – the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the European Union-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement. We ask how, if at all, these negotiations have influenced changes in Vietnam's labour regime, particularly regarding the representation and participation of workers in the country's system of industrial relations. Comparing binding and nonbinding provisions, we find that the effects of trade-labour linkages are mediated by their enforceability, and prospects for strengthening associational rights are improved by the possibility of commercial sanction. Overall, we find that gains for workers in Vietnam continue to be made by collective action, despite a context hostile to freedom of association, and that external influences to improve labour standards and conditions have had a minimal effect.

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This case study focuses on strategic mediating roles of labor newspapers. Concentrating on minimum wage strikes from 2005 to 2006, it shows the state's pro-foreign direct investment policy, tensions between state bureaucracies and labor unions, and their debates. It demonstrates alternatives to the “race to the bottom” thesis. The larger implication is that labor organizing and spontaneous collective actions can be successful even within a one-party state. It remains to be seen how the new strike law ratified in 2006 addresses structural weaknesses of the labor unions and the state, and how it affects labor organizing for workers' rights and interests.

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