Digital Transformation and the Changing World of Work in Vietnam: Emerging Issues for Workers and Labour Relations

Abstract

Digital transformation is reshaping not only employment structures and skill requirements but also the organisation, control, and social relations of work. This article examines how digital transformation is transforming the world of work in Viet Nam and explores its emerging implications for workers, labour relations, and collective representation. Drawing on the sociology of work and labour process theory, the study employs a qualitative research design combining structured document analysis and secondary data analysis. Evidence from peer-reviewed research, International Labour Organization reports, official Vietnamese sources, and selected labour and trade union materials is synthesised through thematic content analysis. The findings identify four interconnected shifts: from standard employment towards increasingly diverse and digitally mediated forms of work; from direct managerial supervision towards digital and algorithmic forms of control; from relatively stable occupational skills towards digital competence and continuous adaptability; and from workplace-centred worker representation towards the need to represent an increasingly dispersed, flexible, and platform-connected workforce. Digitalisation creates opportunities for employment, flexibility, skills development, and labour-market access, but also generates risks related to employment and income insecurity, skills inequalities, work intensification, algorithmic control, data surveillance, and gaps in social protection and worker voice. The article argues that digital transformation should therefore be understood as both a technological and a relational transformation. It proposes a 5R framework: Representation, Rights and Protection, Reskilling, Reach, and Relations and Dialogue, to conceptualise how trade unions and social dialogue can adapt to the changing world of work and contribute to decent and sustainable work in Viet Nam.