Shady Dutch business practices in Vietnam?

This week on Curious Orange, Radio Netherland’s reporter Marcel deCraene gave us a story about the Dutch doing business in Vietnam - apparently Dutch businesses are heading to Hanoi in record numbers.

You can (um, and probably should, if you’re going to read further) listen to the story here.

But to give you a brief summary, Marcel spoke to Bruno Tiedeman, a shipbuilder and owner’s representative for a Dutch investment company. Bruno works at a shipyard building “floating resorts”.

Marcel and Bruno talked mostly about the differences between working in Vietnam vs the Netherlands. For example, Bruno said they follow Dutch specifications for shipbuilding because they are stricter than the Vietnamese requirements.

But, when it came to personnel, it seemed that the Dutch were content to allow the Vietnamese to work under their own - much less stringent - regulations. For example, he said the workers almost all work 6 days a week, 60-80 hours per week, regardless of the weather, wearing slippers, no helmets, no safety equipment and they “just do what they’ve been told to do…”. He said they are happy to do this because they get paid by the kilo - so the more kilos they produce, the more money they earn.

So.

At the end of the piece, Michel and I used the word “exploitation”… though I think at the time we were a little nervous to make such a bold statement, especially without giving the ship builder or ship company a chance to explain. (Correct me if I’m wrong Michel!)

But in retrospect, they did give a sort of explanation - “they want to work as much as they can in order to make as much money as possible”. I’m just not sure that it really stands… because, sure, they want to make as much money as possible, but I’m pretty sure the statement wouldn’t hold if you added “for so many hours” or “under these conditions”. Especially if the workers knew that the company would not be allowed to let Dutch employees work under similar conditions.

Of course, if it’s a choice of long work hours under bad conditions vs no work at all, I think most of us would choose to work.

But it’s not much of a choice.

And it seems to me that this is the whole point of regulating working conditions - so that the choice isn’t between doing something that’s dangerous vs doing nothing (also “dangerous” if you consider the consequences of not working include not eating, losing housing etc).

And I think it’s pretty shady that the Dutch would live up to Dutch ship-building conditions (because they are forced to in order to get insurance) but not up to Dutch work safety standards (presumably because they’re nor forced to).

What do you think? Agree? Disagree? Should the Dutch (and other nations) abide by their own regulations or the host country when they are working in another land? Should it depend on whose regulations are stricter? Is it just good business sense to take advantage of rules and regulations that are less strigent and therefore make the products cheaper? Plus, if I ever go on one of these “floating resorts”, am I just as guilty as the ship-building company of abusing the workers? If I decry these business practices but still choose to purchase stuff as cheaply as possible (which basically means it’s been made under less-than-perfect working conditions), am I as guilty as the companies of exploitation?

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