Series of Rountable

Background

Upon such consideration, since August 2014 the IR Project has supported CIRD to coordinate and organize the regular expert seminars/discussions/round tables which brought together policy-and-law makers, researchers, practitioners, and concerned persons in the field of industrial relations to share and discuss IR issues and challenges. 5 IR roundtables have been well organized so far which drew a lot of attention and interest of many participants. The IR Project is committed to continue providing support for organization of these monthly IR roundtables in 2015, including special year end planning discussion.

Objectives

The objectives of these regular forum discussions on IR issues and challenges is to;
1. Share information, experiences and expertise in industrial relations, including new initiatives, good and bad practices among policy makers, researchers, practitioners, and concerned persons in the field of industrial relations
2. To contribute to improvement of IR policy and practices
3. To strengthen the network for industrial relations development – Vietnam IR Net.

Topics of the discussions

The topics for these regular seminars can be any IR related issues, which includes, but is not limited to, the laws and regulations concerning labour and IR, IR institutions, different issues concerning IR actors and process, good and bad practices, and issues/problems coming up during the implementation of the project activities, etc.
Each seminar will discuss specific topic(s). The specific topic(s) for each seminar will be identified based on suggestions of individuals or organizations concerned and decided based on consultation between CIRD and the Project Office. Basically, topics of these seminars will focus on following issues:

• Basic knowledge and fundamental concepts of IR;
• Roles of the Government, IR actors and IR institutions;
• New changes in provisions on IR in the revised Labour Code and Trade Union Law;
• Selected “hot” issues and new developments of IR practices such as implications of labour provisions in pending trade agreements.

A special year end roundtable, will be organised (tentatively on 4th February 2015) for members of Vietnam IR Net to review and plan for the activities and priorities of the Net. The topics of discussion can be broad and general with regard to current situation and vision/directions for development of industrial relations in Vietnam and how the IR Net istself can be developed. The participants will discuss the direction, plan and priority of Vietnam IR Net and discussions in 2015.

Target participants of discussions

Those participating in regular IR seminars will contribute to the discussions and to be beneficiaries of the discussions. The participants for these regular seminars will be experts and those directly related to the topic of discussion. There should be around 35 participants each seminar. In each seminar, up to 5 participants from Hanoi neighboring provinces can be invited as resource persons for the discussion (There will be one roundtable on experience in developing and managing CBA database where 2 officials of Da Nang FOL will be invited as resource persons). Participants in the seminars could be people coming from 3 major groups:

• researchers coming from research institutes of tripartite partners, academic institutions, including independent researchers
• policy and law makers coming from Government agencies, social partners and other organizations at national and local levels.
• practitioners coming from tripartite partners at all levels

Regular IR seminars are opened for all people who are interested in the topics of discussion to join on a voluntary basis, with the registration in advance. The organizer of the regular IR seminars may circulate invitations to selected specific participants depending on the topics of discussion.