Tiếng Việt
中文 (中国)
Recently, the Vietnamese government announced the approval of swapping public holiday on the April 30th – May 1st occasion to extend the holiday period to 5 days from April 27th to May 1st. This schedule applies to civil servants, but the Ministry encourages business owners to apply it to workers, ensuring full implementation of salary and bonus regulations.
This is the first time in many years that specialized agencies have proposed exchanging holidays during April 30th – May 1st occasion to facilitate workers. However, the late proposal, close to the holiday, caused many businesses to be unprepared even though this policy only applies to the public sector.
This is because many private enterprises have to work closely with government agencies, so if the specialized agencies are off, businesses also find it difficult to operate. Therefore, although Vietnamese businesses are not required to implement this holiday exchange policy, a large portion of them have proactively adopted it.
Part of the reason for this is that even if not enforced, some workers will voluntarily request leave on the 29th to have a continuous 5-day break, fitting their travel and leisure plans.
Conversely, from this event, many wonder if Vietnamese businesses can require workers to make up for holidays on other days. In the case of the 2024 April 30th – May 1st holiday, the exchange is beneficial for both parties, leading to little or no opposition.
However, in other cases, if the exchange only serves the interests of the business without considering the workers’ benefits, is it permissible?
Many manufacturing companies need urgent labor during peak periods, so they propose that workers still work on holidays and compensate on other days. Many Vietnamese companies currently apply this policy for special cases, with the consent of the workers. However, legally, this action violates regulations.
According to the Labor Code of 2019, workers who work on holidays must receive at least 300% of their salary, excluding holiday, Tet, and paid leave days. When exchanging holidays, businesses have reasons not to pay workers proportionately to the minimum legal amount. In many cases, to appease workers, they provide a small support amount for working on holidays, but it’s not proportional to 300%. In more authoritarian companies, bonuses may be very low or even nonexistent, coercing workers to work on holidays or face the risk of being fired.
According to the law, if workers have to work on holidays, businesses must pay them the minimum legal wage, without changing holidays to make up for them on other days. Paying workers less than the minimum wage is also a violation of the law.
However, in reality, most businesses that apply this policy are not penalized because such cases are rare, difficult to quantify, and confirm without workers’ complaints. Additionally, businesses often have measures in place, such as obtaining workers’ confirmation of the holiday exchange, treating it as an agreement confirmed by workers or their representatives such as labor unions.
On the other hand, apart from legal aspects, exchanging holidays for other days also diminishes the significance of the holiday, reducing the sense of gathering and Vietnam’s tradition of remembering its origins. For this reason, even though the Hung Kings’ Commemoration Day on April 18th falls on a Thursday (workers have a day off but still have to work on Friday), no agency proposed moving the holiday to April 29th so that people can have a full 5-day break from April 30th to May 1st although this solution is legally optimal in terms of holiday distribution as it differs from normal days and holidays.
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