VietNamNet Bridge – The huge number of his workers who are on maternity leave has Dong Hung Industrial Joint Stock Co director Ha Huy Hung a bit worried.

Employees at Gia Dinh Garment and Textile Company in HCM City check garment products for export. (Photo: VNS)

Out of the 3,000 employees at his footwear company, 500-700 go out on maternity leave each year.

“Although women are more careful and meticulous workers than men, I am now afraid of recruiting them,” said Hung.

Workers in export processing zones and industrial zones nationwide are mostly young, between 18 and 25 years of age, and largely female, with women making up about 65 per cent of the workforce, said Tran Thanh Duc, deputy director of the job consulting centre at the HCM City Export Processing and Industrial Zone Authority.

Hung said it was a burden on other workers who had to shoulder the work load of those on maternity leave. Meanwhile, the company could not recruit temporary replacements, due to cost and time restraints, he said.

He also complained that many working mothers who had only started working at the company six to seven months prior to going out on maternity leave were able to quit their jobs and find better-paying positions after enjoying maternity benefits.

“An employer is prohibited from dismissing a pregnant worker from the date on which she is confirmed pregnant by a medical certificate to the date on which she is due to return to work upon the expiration of her maternity leave,” said Dao Ngoc Hung, a lawyer from the HCM City Bar Association.

The Labour Code also stipulates that workers who are pregnant, on maternity leave, or have children under 12 months of age, can breach labour contracts or work regulations and the employers are not allowed to take punitive actions until the workers’ children are more than one year old.

“These are loopholes in the law that workers are taking advantage of, putting enterprises in a difficult situation,” said Hung.

But Nguyen Thi Thuy, 21, a worker at the Quang Minh Industrial Zone in Ha Noi, said she and some other employees continued to work as normal during their pregnancies and after returning from their maternity leaves.

“My company always said that they pay social insurance for all workers after the probationary period,” Thuy said. “However, when a number of women asked for their maternity allowances, it turns out that they had not paid our social insurance.”

Nguyen Thi Tam, 22, a worker with the AFTI Co in Quang Minh Industrial Zone, also complained that some of her co-workers had also not been paid maternity allowances even though their employers had said that social insurance had been paid for them.

According to Nguyen Quoc Viet, a lawyer from the Ha Noi Bar Association, employers are not allowed to make female workers in their seventh month of pregnancy work overtime, at night or at distant locations. Female workers performing strenuous work, on reaching their seventh month of pregnancy, must be transferred to lighter work or have their daily hours reduced by one hour, while still receiving their full wages.

Under the Labour Code, employees are entitled to maternity benefits of 100 per cent of their average monthly social insurance payments in the six months preceding maternity leave.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News