Long hours, rising fatigue: Vietnam may move toward a 40-hour workweek

At a Jan. 15 conference reviewing five years of the Labor Code, Professor Le Van Trinh, chairman of the Vietnam Occupational Safety and Health Association, urged Vietnam to adopt a clear legal roadmap to reduce standard working hours from 48 to 44 hours, and eventually to 40 hours per week. He said the shift should be written directly into law rather than left as a voluntary option, especially for labor-intensive industries.

Although current regulations encourage a 40-hour workweek, Professor Trinh noted that 48 hours remains the norm across much of the private sector. Surveys in industrial zones show many workers accept long hours to boost income, but often at the cost of declining health, chronic fatigue and limited family time.

Overtime has become one of the most sensitive issues in labor relations. While the law defines overtime as voluntary, workers often feel they have little choice if they want to keep their jobs or maintain earnings. During peak production periods, especially in the final months of the year, employees may be required to work extended overtime for weeks on end, increasing exhaustion, workplace accidents and the risk of collective labor disputes.

Research by the Institute of Labor Science and Social Affairs has found that workplace accidents in labor-intensive sectors occur most frequently at the end of long shifts or during heavy overtime periods, when concentration drops. Workers who log 40-50 hours of overtime per month show significantly higher rates of chronic fatigue, headaches and reduced focus than those with little or no overtime, all of which raise the likelihood of safety violations and operational errors.

Professor Trinh called for a comprehensive review of overtime limits, stricter penalties for violations and stronger enforcement of rest breaks and annual leave. Many workers report that breaks are shortened or that they avoid taking leave altogether out of fear it could affect income or performance evaluations. Any revision of the Labor Code, he said, must ensure that rest is treated as a legal right, not a discretionary benefit.

"Working hours and rest time are fundamental rights of workers," he said, comparing labor to farmland that must be allowed to recover in order to remain productive.

The idea of reducing working hours has resurfaced repeatedly in Vietnam's National Assembly sessions.

In June 2025, lawmaker Pham Trong Nghia proposed cutting weekly working hours to 44 by 2026 and to 40 by 2030, alongside the early adoption of a national human resource development strategy.

Nghia previously argued that while Vietnam has made major economic gains over decades, private-sector working hours have remained unchanged, even as overtime has increased sharply. Since 1999, public-sector employees have worked a 40-hour week, while most private-sector workers continue to work up to 48 hours.

Under current law, employees may work up to eight hours per day and 48 hours per week under normal conditions. Overtime is capped at 40 hours per month and 200 hours per year, with a higher limit of 300 hours for certain industries such as garment manufacturing, footwear, agriculture and seafood processing, electricity, telecommunications and electronics.