ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 begins to look at working class political composition, or forms of labour activism. I argue that Vietnamese worker activism can be described as decentralised resistance. This chapter focuses on wildcat strikes, the archetypal form of labour militancy in Vietnam. There has never been a non-wildcat strike in the country. The chapter begins with a deep dive into literature on Vietnamese wildcat strikes and strike trends. It then provides an in-depth description of a two-day wildcat strike that occurred at the Pou Chen shoe factory in Bien Hoa City, Dong Nai Province, in March 2018. An analytical section then brings the data on that specific strike into conversation with other interview data, and the scholarship outlined in the first part of the chapter, to make an argument about how wildcat strikes are organised in contemporary Vietnam. I argue that they have a decentralised structure, with small groups of workers taking autonomous actions as part of the larger strike. There are high levels of solidarity but few identifiable leaders or sustained worker representatives. This strike form does not mirror the structure of a trade union-led strike.
