**Table 4.10 Previous Profession of Firm Managers (%)**

||**Manufacturing**|**Other Indus try**|**Services**|**Total**|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|Agriculture (Informal)|1.9|0.0|0.9|1.2|
|Trade (Informal)|9.7|12.1|25.8|18.5|
|Manufacturing (Informal)|14.2|3.0|6.1|9.0|
|Collective|4.5|0.0|0.5|2.0|
|Private Company|13.5|18.2|16.0|15.2|
|State Enterprise|41.9|51.5|38.0|40.6|
|Organization under VCP,|11.0|12.1|7.0|9.0|
|Government, Army|||||
|Other|3.2|3.0|5.6|4.4|
|**_Total_**|**_100.0_**|**_100.0_**|**_100.0_**|**_100.0_**|

Source: World Bank Survey, 2001

## **<mark>Box 4.3 Nong Thon Garments Ltd.: Management’s View of Rural-Urban Transition</mark>**

<mark>Two thirds of Nong Thon Garment Company Ltd.’s workers are from the countryside. This, says General Director Mr. Pham Quan Tri, comes with its drawbacks. “Workers still act very much like countryside people. Sometimes people quit or are fired because of fighting with each other. If the owner is short with them, they get angry and do not listen and improve their approach to work. They have trouble distinguishing between the way people interact at home and the way they interact out in society and in business.” Annual worker turnover at Nong Thon is about 300 a year, or more than 20 percent of the current work force. Reasons for leaving work commonly involve a violation of company rules, pregnancy or marriage, changing profession, getting old, or switching jobs for a higher salary.</mark> Mr. Tri says the dynamics between manager and worker in the private sector are often <mark>misunderstood, leading to a negative reputation for the private sector. “The Vietnamese media still commonly uses the derogatory work for traders to refer to private firms”, says Mr. Tri. “Maybe this is just a habit of language, but it reflects a general way of thinking that pervades society. People think that owners are always firing their employees, but don’t understand that we also always fear that our employees will suddenly quit. We should be more valued for our efforts to be more efficient, as it contributes to the wealth of the nation.”</mark> Despite such challenges, Nong Thon Garments is doing well. In January 2000, the firm expanded <mark>from two factories to four, and with that change double its work force from 700 to 1,440 employees. Mr. Tri began putting ads in the newspaper and contacting job introduction services and training schools only two months before making the two new factories operational, but still found himself awash in applicants. Knowing that many of his prospective employees would have just recently left their homes in the countryside, Mr. Tri did not ask for resident permission papers or letters of recommendation. After being hired, says Mr. Tri, workers usually undergo training for anywhere between six to 12 months.</mark>

# **The Workers**

31. More than half of the workers with private Vietnamese companies are women. This is because women make up two-thirds of the workers at private manufacturing firms, the largest type of private company. Garments and leather goods producers, in particular, overwhelmingly hire female workers.

32. For many workers in the private sector, employment is not very secure. In the manufacturing sector only 50 percent of workers have long-term stable contracts. The 16