Vietnam is still officially ruled by a communist party, but half of its economy is privately-owned, and now it has passed legislation to shrink its bureaucracy by 20%. Ironically, Vietnam’s communists are much more willing to fire bureaucrats than America’s Democratic Party, which opposes even modest cuts to government agencies.
Vietnam’s parliament formally approved a plan for the biggest government overhaul in decades, a move that will slash thousands of jobs and radically streamline a bloated bureaucracy in an effort to pursue ambitious growth targets. The vote was passed Tuesday at an extraordinary meeting of the National Assembly in Hanoi.
An estimated 100,000 civil servants will be affected as the government targets a roughly 20% reduction in the size of ministries, government agencies and workforce in the biggest restructuring since Vietnam adopted pro-market reforms in the 1980s.
Under the plan, five ministries are being abolished. Others will be merged, such as finance with planning and investment. Outlets for information are being dramatically curbed with many state-run TV channels being shut down, and multiple newspapers and magazines scrapped….
The reforms are seen as key to unlocking the 8% economic growth that Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh is pushing for this year, with a view to strive for double-digit growth in the coming years.
A range of payouts is being offered to thousands of government workers being laid off. Many are worried about finding new jobs amid the influx of workers from the public to the private sector.
In Vietnam, the legislature has passed a law to shrink the bureaucracy, and there will be no judicial opposition to carrying it out. Vietnamese judges are obedient to their government, so there will be no judicial resistance.
In the U.S., by contrast, the Trump administration is trying to cut the bureaucracy using executive action, without any specific legislation.
But it is getting pushback from judges, who are thwarting many Trump administration layoffs. A federal judge in San Francisco just ordered the Office of Personnel Management to rescind directives that initiated the mass firing of probationary government workers in several agencies across the government, ruling that the terminations were probably illegal. The judge took issue with the fact that the layoffs were ordered by OPM, rather than the heads of the agencies that employed the government workers.
Some Trump administration layoffs seem like a good idea — like its plans to eliminate most employees at the EEOC, which routinely brings frivolous discrimination lawsuits. If workers have valid discrimination claims, they don’t need the EEOC to sue on their behalf, they can do so using their own lawyers, and collect their attorneys fees from their employer if they win. (The EEOC gives most workers who file complaints with it a “right to sue” letter, rather than suing on their behalf. But it sues on behalf of some workers, using its large budget and resources to stack the deck against the employers it sues).
Under the Obama administration, the EEOC sued employers for using hiring criteria required by state law, demanding that they violate health and safety codes. It even pressured employers to hire felons as armed guards. The EEOC sued companies that quite reasonably refuse to employ truck drivers with a history of heavy drinking, even though companies that hire them will be sued under state personal-injury laws when they have an accident. The EEOC has also used costly lawsuits to pressure businesses into hiring or rehiring incompetent employees. In 2011, a hotel chain had to pay $132,500 for dismissing an autistic clerk who did not do his job properly, in order to get the EEOC to dismiss its lawsuit. In 2012, a café owner had to pay thousands of dollars for not selecting a hearing- and speech-impaired employee for a customer-service position that the employee was unqualified for.
Even layoffs that are a good idea may run into legal barriers, if they haven’t been specifically approved by Congress. They may be barred by existing law or regulations in some cases, or have to go through time-consuming procedural hoops first, in other cases.
