Vietnam: Competence for settlement of labor dispute of the Labor Arbitration Council

1. Settlement for collective labor disputes

According to Articles 191 and 195 of the Labor Code 2019 of Vietnam, the Labor Arbitration Council has the competence to settle right- and interest-based collective labor disputes between parties in labor relations. On the basis of consensus, the disputing parties have the right to request the Labor Arbitration Council to settle the labor dispute in case the conciliation fails or the time limit as prescribed has expired but the mediator fails to conduct the conciliation or one of the parties fails to implement the agreement in the minutes of successful conciliation.

Within 07 working days from the receipt of the request, an arbitral tribunal shall be established, in which:

- The representative of each disputing party shall choose 01 labor arbitrator from the list of labor arbitrators;

- The labor arbitrators chosen by the parties as prescribed in Point a of this Clause shall choose 01 other labor arbitrator as the chief of the arbitral tribunal;

- In case a labor arbitrator is selected by more than one disputing party, the arbitral tribunal shall appoint 01 of the chosen arbitrators.

Within 30 working days from the establishment of the arbitral tribunal, it shall issue a decision on the settlement of the labor dispute and send it to the disputing parties. If violations of law are found during settlement of right-based collective labor disputes mentioned in Point b and Point c Clause 2 Article 179 of this Labor Code, the arbitral tribunal shall, instead of making a settlement decision, issue a record and transfer the documents to a competent authority for settlement as prescribed by law.

Article 179. Labor disputes

2. A right-based collective labor dispute of rights means a dispute between one or several representative organizations of employees and the employer or one or several representative organizations of employees in case of:

…

b) Discrepancies in interpretation and implementation of labor laws; or

c) The employer’s discrimination against the employees or members of the management board of the representative organization of employees for reasons of establishment, operation or participation in the organization; the employer’s interference or influencing the representative organization of employees; the employer’ violations against amicable negotiation.

While the Labor Arbitration Council is settling a dispute at the request of the parties, the parties must comply with the following provisions:

- Regarding right-based collective labor disputes: the parties must not bring the same dispute to Court

- Regarding interest-based collective labor disputes: the representative organization of employees must not call a strike

2. Settlement for individual labor disputes

One of the new points of the Labor Code 2019 of Vietnam is that individual labor disputes, in addition to being settled by a mediator or the Court, now the parties to the dispute can also bring the case to the Labor Arbitration Council to be settled.

Specifically, according to Article 188 of the Labor Code 2019 of Vietnam, in case that individual labor disputes are not required to go through conciliation procedures; or at the end of the prescribed conciliation time limit, the labor mediator fails to conduct conciliation; or in case the conciliation fails as prescribed, the disputing parties have the right to choose the method of requesting the Labor Arbitration Council to settle the dispute. When requesting the Labor Arbitration Council to settle a dispute, the parties may not concurrently request the Court to settle the dispute, except in the case of expiration of the prescribed time limit but the labor arbitration panel is not established or the prescribed time limit expires that the Labor Arbitration Board did not issue a decision to settle the dispute.

The decision of the Labor Arbitration Board is binding on the parties. In case one of the parties fails to implement the dispute settlement decision of the Labor Arbitration Board, the parties have the right to request the Court to settle the dispute.

Thus, from 2021, in addition to the method of resolving individual labor disputes at Court for irreconcilable disputes, the parties can choose to add another method of dispute settlement by an arbitration council. This contributes to shortening the settlement time for the parties to the dispute (30 days compared to 02 months for the settlement of labor cases according to normal procedures at the Court) without much cost.

>> CLICK HERE TO READ THIS ARTICLE IN VIETNAMESE