Author Archives: helenaworthen

Warning: This is a cold reading of the Labor Side Agreement by a US visitor. It is not a researched commentary that reflects the view of people in the know here in Vietnam. It is addressed to labor activists in the US. All the commentary coming from labor activists in the US, at least allContinue reading “Thoughts Upon Reading the TPP Labor Side Agreement”

The Concertmistress gives the A Honna Tetsuji is Music Director and Principal conductor of the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra. He conducted a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth, complete with huge chorus, on Friday night Dec 18 at the Opera House. We went. It was great. This performance appeared to be sponsored by a Japanese company. OlderContinue reading “Hanoi (4) The Opera House”

Not a great picture of me, but Tuyen took it, Joe looks fine, I’m wearing the scarf that An gave me, and the building in the rear is the VGCL Nine days in Hanoi. Many conversations. Some connections made for us by Philip Hazelton from the ILO, whom we met at TDTU in September, andContinue reading “Hanoi Conversations”

A teacher is teaching a boy how to swim. The boy lies on the ground and the teacher moves the boy’s arms up and over, to show him how they should go. The teacher lifts the boy’s feet and moves them up and down to show him how to kick. Then the teacher lets theContinue reading “The Swimmer and the Sea”

The Vietnam National Museum of Fine Arts had an exhibit called, at least in English, “Realism.” The wall poster at the entrance was not inspiring in its English translation. Reading it, my main reaction was that this was a pre-emptive effort to deflect possible criticism. It seemed to say that Realism (and it listed six or eightContinue reading “Hanoi (2) Realism”

  Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam. Seven million people live there today. It feels like a combination of New York City and Paris. According to one guide book, space in the Old Quarter is the most costly per square meter in the world. Luckily, our room at the Charming Hotel II on Hang GaContinue reading “Hanoi (1)”

  The students’ final presentations were supposed to be stories about what people did in the workplaces to make their work lives better. Theoretically, the stories were supposed to be about collective action: organizing or leadership. However, we emphasized that what was most important was to tell what really happened, not to make something up.Continue reading “What Did We Learn from Student Reports? (2)”

All the reports summarized and put into a table, printed out and taped together.   This will be the first of several posts on this topic. In this post, I’m just describing the  initial sorting process that had to be done with all the student reports when they came in. Combining Joe’s class and mine,Continue reading “What did we learn from the student reports? (1)”

I have mentioned walking through the terraces on the ground floor of the buildings and seeing displays of work done by the various design departments. Early in our days here, we saw fabulous gowns and sharp costumes. We also saw what was apparently an architecture final project that involved designs for resorts, something that IContinue reading “Design at TDTU”

Rich Trumka, AFL CIO President, with locked-out AFSCME 3494 workers.   Effingham: From Organizing to Contract   I never expected to hear the word “Effingham” pronounced in the middle of a sentence in Vietnamese, but it has now happened numerous times. I used the Effingham story, in which the workers at Heartland Health Services organized as AFSCMEContinue reading “Effingham”