SP for migrant workers The project "Promoting the rights and voices of migrant workers, especially women, towards social protection and better working condition in Bac Ninh and Hai Duong provinces" will be implimented by Center for Development and Integration (CDI).

 The proposed action was built upon CDI experiences and identified challenges, seeking to address the violation of worker rights and access to social protection. The goal of project is to contribute for empowerment of workers, especially migrant worker to collectively claim their rights and raise their voices towards social protection and better working condition. The expected outcomes of project including (i) EO 1: Migrant workers working in electronics and garment industry are more organized and networked to claim their rights;(ii) EO 2: Migrant workers, especially women, and CSOs are capable to influence the revisision of policies and practices on Labor Code and living wage; (iii) EO3: Private sector and other stakeholders increase their support migrant workers for better working conditions (especially OSH).

In partnership with Labor Union of 2 provinces, namely Bac Ninh and Hai Duong, CDI will work in 3 industrial zones in 2 provinces to support workers in factories and migrant workers living in project areas. 2 of them are the previous project areas ofCDI. This could be a strength of CDI to implement proposed project. However, CDI will meet the challenge of the high turn-over of workers in all industrial zones. The maintainance of worker groups will be the big challenge, therefore the back up plan and the spreading knowledges should be prioritized strategy. Hai Duong and Bac Ninh will be the pilot provinces and be considered as areas of evidence collection that support for higher level of advocacy.

The project#s theory of change based on the belief that (i) migrant workers as other citizens that have full rights as the other to be respected and protected; (ii) Empower for the vulnerable group, such as workers, migrant workers, they can protect themself for better working condition and social protection.  Being built capacity, engaged in developing the policy relating to themselves and good organizing for collective bargaining actions, the workers, especially migrant workers in garment and electronic will be able to claim their rights,  engaging in policy development such as Labor code and are able to negotiate on living wage. Through this process, they will influence the private sector and other stakeholders in supporting migrant workers for better working conditions. In details, during the five-year-program, CDI will conduct the program with the human rights-based approach and link activities from local to national to regional level. Key interventions will be developed to ensure that migrant workersare at the central of all activities. Migrant workers will be supported to organize themselves with 6 groups in each province, and become more active to claim their rights and raise their voices. This will be done by a lot of activities such as trainings,regular worker group meetings, discussions, action plans, dialogues, workshops, communication, events, etc# to improve their KASH (Knowledge, Attitudes, Skills and Habit). Particularly, 2 networks of migrant workers working in electronics and garment industry will be formed to better plan for joint actions of workers in each province. In the long term, they will be spreading to more provinces and expecting that they will be champions of national networks. It is expected that the 2 networks will consist ofworkers leaders and active members from 12 workers groups. They will be informal networks (not necessarily to register to the authorities) but active networks to consolidate workers# feedbacks and facilitate joint actions for better working conditions andbetter right protection in each industry. In all activities, women leaders and women empowerment will be emphasized because most of workers in electronics and garment industries are women. They are more vulnerable not only because of being migrants butalso facing with gender inequality, including gender-norms and gender-based violence.

Moreover, our local partners and other actors (LU, WU, local authorities, DOLISA, Social insurance department, lawyers, landlords, other CSOs etc) will be mobilizedto engage in this process to support migrant workers. They will play the role of key resource persons who provide technical or direct support to migrant workers in regular meetings, dialogues, workshops, legal aids and especially they will be in charged ofsolving the case of violate the labor law and social protection policy as well as advocating for better policies for workers in general and for migrant workers in particular.

At national level, CDI and other CSOs, particularly M.net members, and workers#leaders will act and advocate for changes in PPAB (Policies, Practices and Mechanisms of Accountability and transparency). For policies, we aim at participating in the revision of theLabor Code and wage policies. The opportunities for our engagement is clear as the National Assembly (NA) has discussed these policy changes since 2016. CDI and M.net have joined some technical meetings organized by MOLISA and NA regarding the Labor Code revision. For practices and mechanisms, we will work with LUs andprivatesectors (employers, employer associations) to promote social dialogues at workplaces and improving working conditions.

For this to occurs, conditions for CDI are required simultaneously in 5 domains:a)  ) Vietnam's government keeps positive openness and committment in human rights and labor rights b) Local actors relating to labor and migrant workers are supportive in promoting workers rights, take possible policy adjustments and stimulate the implementationof labour and social policies and regulations. c) The private sector might or might not act to prevent workers defend their rights as this requirement of social compliance; d) The condition of FTA is strickly complied by goverments with governments; e) The process of developing law/policies is fully complied in which ensure the voice of direct beneficiery.