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Factory Life: Visit to 3 Plants

By Barry Romo

On our tour we visited 3 factories and were able to observe work conditions, talk to union representatives and sample local products. While there were not giant steel mills, we did get an idea about factory life in Vietnam.

In Hanoi we visited the Dong Da wool carpet factory. Its main products were high-grade, handmade carpets for export. The quality was exceedingly fine, incorporating designs which ranged from traditional to modern—some of the products seemed closer to tapestries than to carpets. For the most part the carpets were exported to West Germany, the USSR and Italy.

There were 80 workers at the plant, 95% of them women, ranging in age from 17 to 54. Workers were paid in combination wage plus piece work and generally saw the product to its completion providing a sense of personal satisfaction and accomplishment. As in most wool factories brown lung was a problem, but the factory had a high ceiling, was well lighted and open.

Childcare was provided at the factory, a reality for most of Vietnam; women were allowed time with children for feeding. As with all the plants we visited there seems to be an extremely relaxed feeling, a long ways from the kind of pressure-cooker atmosphere in comparable U.S. factories.

We visited two factories in Song Be Province west of Ho Chi Minh City. The first was a traditional lacquer factory. All work was done by hand and the art was passed on from generation to generation. The lacquer work begins with plain wood, a flat piece that ends up as a wall tile or a tube which becomes an inlaid vase. The wood is covered with cloth, rubbed with cuddle bone (yes, just like the one you put in your parakeet's cage). Next come four separate coats of paint, smoothed out with water, followed by four more coats of paint, a sealer and a final coat of special paint. Then comes the hand rubbing. One mistake—too much paint—and the article is no good and thrown away. Sea shells are cut by hand in elaborate designs to be inlaid or designs on rice paper are painted onto the product in the early stages.

Lastly we visited a ceramics factory. This was privately owned, built in 1981. Wages were better than in cooperatively or state-run factories, some 20-30% better. This was clearly an attempt by the state to try out different economic forms to see which would work best under what circumstances, a far cry from an inflexible economic policy. A good block long, the factory produced everything from cups and saucers to elaborate 4-foot high cases, exquisitely painted. Except for the oven, everything was open air with a straw roof, and although some items were mass-produced, they were still all hand-painted. Work seemed to move along easily but the products were anything but simple. Some were made for home use, some for export—in fact we later saw some of the products in Thailand.

It was apparent to us that the U.S. was missing a tremendous bargain; we saw goods of exceedingly high quality at very low prices, and we could only hope that enterprising U.S. businessman might help to get relations between the countries restored—Vietnam could certainly use the foreign trade. What we saw was still another example of the U.S. refusing to trade while everyone around us is trading. In fact, Japanese businessman this year have started exporting out to Japan through joint Vietnamese/Japanese ventures.

—Barry Romo
VVAW National Office