VIETNAM Law and Practice Contributed by: Thang Nguyen, Minh Nguyen and Nguyet Le, ACSV Legal
4.4 Termination of Employment Contracts No At-Will Employment
• (d) the employee fails to attend the workplace within 15 days from the expiry of the suspen - sion of the labour contract; • (e) the employee reaches retirement age; • (f) the employee arbitrarily leaves his/her work without proper reason for five consecutive working days or more; or • (g) the employee provides untruthful informa - tion affecting his/her recruitment. In the case of (a), (b), (c), (e) and (g) above, the employer must send the employee a written notice of termination as detailed below. At least: • 45 days for indefinite-term contracts; • 30 days for definite-term contracts with a duration between 12 and 36 months; and • three working days for definite-term contracts of less than 12 months; or • three working days for termination of the con - tract due to illness or injury of the employee. Financial compensation for the terminated employee To lawfully terminate the employment relation - ship, the employer needs to settle all payables to the employee until the effective date of the termination, including: • wages, benefits and compulsory contribu - tions (ie, social insurance, health insurance and unemployment insurance); and • job loss allowance or severance allowance subject to the cause of termination (where applicable). Retrenchment To ensure the validity of retrenchment, the fol - lowing significant procedures and requirements must be fulfilled by the employer:
Vietnam does not follow at-will employment practices. Accordingly, an employer cannot unilaterally terminate a labour contract with an employee early without cause and without fol - lowing mandatory procedures. Subject to the cause of labour termination, the employer must follow a strict procedure as set out in the 2019 Labour Code to validate the unilateral labour termination. Cases of unilateral labour termination by an employer An employer is entitled to unilaterally terminate a labour contract in the following circumstances: • (a) the employee repeatedly fails to perform work in accordance with the terms of the labour contract as determined based on the assessment criteria of work performance level in the rule issued by the employer upon con - sulting opinions of an organisation represent - ing employees at the grassroots level, which includes the trade union at grassroots level and other organisation of employees at an enterprise (labour union), if any; • (b) the employee is ill or injured and remains unable to work after having received treat - ment for a period of 12 consecutive months (indefinite-term contract) or six consecutive months (definite-term contract with a dura - tion between 12 and 36 months), and more than half of the contract duration (definite- term contract with a duration of less than 12 months); • (c) the employer, although having taken all measures to remedy the problem, has to reduce the number of jobs due to natural dis - asters, fire, epidemics or other force majeure reasons;
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