欧米の消費減速で工場労働者数万人が解雇　製造拠点のベトナム

【ホーチミンＡＦＰ＝時事】ベトナムでは、欧米諸国での消費の減速を受け、工場労働者数万人が解雇された。「ティンバーランド」や「ケー・スイス」など、世界的なブランドのスニーカーや靴を１０年にわたって作ってきたファン・ティ・ニエウさん（３１）も、そのうちの一人だ。（写真はベトナム・ホーチミンで、台湾メーカーのティ・フン社の靴工場を去る労働者たち）
　衣服や靴、家具の世界有数の輸出国であるベトナムでは、受注の減少により、５０万人近くが労働時間の削減を余儀なくされている。
　ベトナム製品の主要な輸出先である欧米諸国では、物価上昇に伴い、消費者の購買力が低下している。ベトナムでこの影響を最も強く受けているのが、衣料品製造業で労働力の８割を占める女性だ。
　息子２人と夫と共に、ホーチミンにある９平方メートルの部屋で暮らすニエウさんは先月初め、欧米ブランドに供給している台湾の靴メーカーから解雇を通告された。
　「十分な注文が入っていない」と説明され、工場の労働者１８００人のうち１２００人に解雇が言い渡されたという。
　物価の高いホーチミンの平均月収は約５万円だが、ニエウさんの月収は約３万円だった。

■コロナよりも打撃大きい
　現在、わずか２か月分の解雇手当で生活していかなければならず、１日の生活費を数百円に抑える必要があり、子どもたちの食事もままならない状況だ。
　ベトナム労働総同盟によると、９月以降、衣料や靴、家具部門の外資系企業を中心に、１２００社以上が解雇や労働時間の短縮に踏み切った。
　ロシアのウクライナ侵攻でエネルギー価格が高騰し、インフレに見舞われている欧米からの注文は、米国が３０～４０％、欧州が６０％それぞれ減少した。
　労働総同盟によると、過去４か月間で４７万人以上が労働時間の短縮を強いられたほか、約４万人が失業。うち３万人が３５歳以上の女性だった。労働者によれば、状況は、自宅待機を余儀なくされた新型コロナウイルス感染症（ＣＯＶＩＤ－１９）の流行時よりも厳しいという。
　米大型スーパー「ウォルマート」向けの衣料品を製造する韓国企業から解雇されたグエン・ティ・トムさん（３５）は、「以前のような仕事を探すのは容易でない」と話す。

■夢見る余裕はない
　３人の子供を持つトムさんは解雇されて以降、ホーチミン郊外の路上で、乾麺やエビのソース、オレンジを売っている。
　ホーチミン商工会の副代表によると、ベトナムの輸出業界は今年前半には「能力限界」で操業していたことから、輸出の減速を受けて激震が走っている。
　副代表はＡＦＰに対し、「第３四半期の初めに世界的なインフレを受け、消費需要が減少して注文が止まり、在庫が大きく積み上がった」と語った。
　ただ、こうした状況は一時的なものにとどまる可能性があり、「来年は（現在の減少を）埋め合わせる生産量の増加が見られるだろう」と楽観している。
　ベトナムの低賃金労働者は、同国が中国に代わる主要な製造拠点になるのに貢献してきたが、そうした人々の一人であるニエウさんやトムさんは、何とか生活していく手立てを見つけ出さなければならない。
　ニエウさんは「人生で何を望むかといった夢を見る余裕はなかった。生きるために十分な稼ぎがほしいというのが唯一の願いだ」と話した。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2022/12/27-11:50）

Phan Thi Nhieu has spent a decade assembling shoes for worldwide brands such as Timberland and K-Swiss, but she is now among tens of thousands of Vietnamese factory workers laid off as Western consumers cut spending.
Almost half a million others have been forced to work fewer hours as orders fall in the Southeast Asian country, one of the world's largest exporters of clothing, footwear and furniture.
The cost-of-living crisis in Europe and the United States -- major markets for Vietnamese-produced goods -- has seen the buying power of Western shoppers plunge.
Women factory workers, who make up 80 percent of the labour force in Vietnam's garment industry, have been hit the hardest by the knock-on effect.
Early last month, 31-year-old Nhieu -- who lives in a nine-square-metre (100 square feet) room in Ho Chi Minh City with her two young sons and husband -- was told she was no longer needed at Ty Hung Company, a Taiwanese shoemaker that supplies big Western labels.
They told us they did not have enough orders, she said of Ty Hung's announcement that it would fire 1,200 of its 1,800 staff.
I was so, so shocked and so scared, I cried, but I can do nothing, I have to accept it.
The job earned Nhieu just $220 a month in an expensive city where the average monthly income is $370, but the money was regular and a step up from the mushroom picking she did as a teenager in the heat of the Mekong Delta.
- 'Worse than Covid' -
Now, with just two months' severance pay to survive on, Nhieu must feed her family on a few dollars a day, and her kids are struggling to get enough to eat.
We have no one to help us. I will have to get us through this on my own.
Since September, more than 1,200 companies -- mostly foreign businesses in the garment, footwear and furniture sectors -- have been forced to sack staff or cut working hours, according to the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour.
Compared with last year, orders are down 30-40 percent from the United States and 60 percent from Europe, where inflation and energy bills have soared because of the war in Ukraine.
More than 470,000 workers have had their hours slashed in the last four months of the year while about 40,000 people have lost their jobs -- 30,000 of them women aged 35 or older, the confederation said.
Taiwanese giant Pouyuen, a Nike shoe producer, has put 20,000 of its workers on paid leave in rotation, while reports said Vietnam's largest foreign investor, Samsung Electronics, has started reducing its smartphone production at factories in the north.
The situation is bleaker than during the Covid-19 pandemic, say workers, who were helped out with food donations when strict quarantine measures forced them to stay home -- and were quickly in demand again once restrictions lifted at the end of 2021.
It's not easy to find a new job like before (following the pandemic), said Nguyen Thi Thom, 35, who was laid off from a South Korean garment firm that makes clothes for US retail giant Walmart.
- No dream -
Since her factory work finished, Thom, who has three young children, spends her days on the streets of a shiny new suburban district of Ho Chi Minh City, selling dried noodles, shrimp sauce and oranges to passers-by.
The slowdown has come as a shock because export businesses in Vietnam were running at their fullest capacity for the first half of 2022, according to Tran Viet Anh, deputy head of Ho Chi Minh City's Business Association.
At the start of the third quarter, due to global inflation, consumption demands have shrunk, leading to the suspension of orders... and huge stock surplus, he told AFP.
But the downturn in Vietnam will likely only be temporary, Viet Anh added.
A cut in production during the pandemic led to a shortage of goods in the first six months of 2022, and the situation will likely repeat a year on.
Viet Anh said that 2023 will be a period where we increase production to compensate.
Until then, women like Nhieu and Thom, who form the backbone of a low-paid workforce that has helped Vietnam become a key manufacturing hub seen as an alternative to China, must find another way to keep their families afloat.
I have never had the luxury of dreaming what I want from life. I have only one wish, of earning enough to survive, Nhieu said.