Thousands strike for bonus at top shoemaker Pou Chen's factory in Vietnam
07/01/2022 12:09
HANOI, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Thousands of employees at Pou Chen 9904.TW , the
world's largest manufacturer of branded sports footwear, went on strike at a
factory in southern Vietnam on Friday, demanding better year-end bonuses, state
media reported.
The Taiwan-owned company supplies to Nike Inc. NKE.N and Adidas AG
ADSGn.DE .
Workers at the factory in Bien Hoa City complained that the company cut
their year-end bonus to the equivalent of between 1.0 and 1.5 months of salary,
from 1.9-2.2 months in the previous years, Tuoi Tre newspaper reported.
Pou Chen didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Photos on the newspaper's website showed several hundreds of people standing
in front of what appears to be the factory and in a nearby park.
All of the factory's 16,000 workers stopped working due to the strike, the
report said.
The city authorities are negotiating with the company executives to raise
the bonuses to last year's levels, Tuoi Tre reported, citing the chairman of the
city's People's Committee Nguyen Huu Nguyen.
"The workers also need to share the difficulties with the company which had
to suspend production for a long time last year due to the pandemic," Nguyen was
quoted as saying.
(Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)