ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the restructuring and its implications for the workers in state owned enterprises (SOEs). The employment and wage impacts of trade liberalisation in textiles have been mainly indirect, occurring through the medium of SOE restructuring and investment in capital equipment embodying new, less labour intensive, technology. An important factor in the state sector's export successes has been the focus of the restructuring in the 1990s in encouraging textile SOEs to move forwards into the production of garments. A central feature of textiles production in Vietnam is the role played by SOEs, which produce about half of total output. Since the early 1990s, and even before, Vietnamese textile SOEs have been restructuring. Vietnam is a transitional economy that has been ' its trade regime under its doi moi reforms started in 1986. Vietnam signed a trade agreement with the European Union (EU) in 1992, which gave it export quotas for garments into the EU market with effect from 1993.
