Taiwanese footwear manufacturer Pou Chen Group (寶成集團) yesterday said that the company has decided to cancel a new raft of reward-and-punishment measures for Vietnamese workers at a production base in Dong Nai Province, amid an ongoing strike.
The company is one of the largest contract footwear manufacturers in the world, with clients such as Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Asics, Under Armour, New Balance, Puma, Converse, Salomon and Timberland.
Pou Chen said the strike is not expected to have any material impact on its production.
The company said it has also agreed to provide wages during the strike period, hoping workers would return to the production line today.
The strike started at a plant in Bien Hoa City, the capital of Dong Nai Province in southern Vietnam, on Thursday afternoon.
Foreign media outlets reported that about 17,000 employees out of about 21,600 workers at the plant went on strike over new company policies that cut their salaries for missing work.
Missing work with permission could also result in a loss of monetary rewards, according to reports in Vietnamese media outlets.
Pou Chen said it has been trying to deal with the issue by improving communications with the workers on strike and hoped to resolve the incident as soon as possible.
It was not the first time that the company faced a strike in Vietnam.
In March last year, thousands of workers went on strike at four factories employing more than 90,000 people over the Vietnamese government’s new pension rules.
Pou Chen set up production facilities for its footwear business in Dong Nai in 1994 and operates other production bases in Ho Chi Minh City, Tay Ninh and Tien Giang. The group employs about 160,000 workers in Vietnam.
Vietnam is just one of Pou Chen’s many production sites around the world. It also operates factories in Taiwan, China, Indonesia, the US, Mexico and other areas in Asia.
Pou Chen produces more than 300 million pairs of shoes per year, according to the company’s Web site. The group accounts for about 20 percent of the entire wholesale value of the global branded athletic and casual footwear market.
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