Question 61: What legal issues that Employers should be aware of when issuing the salary scale and salary table, and determining the ceiling level for each position in the enterprise?

When issuing the salary scale and salary table, Employers should pay attention to the following:

  • The salary levels of the jobs or titles with heavy, harmful, dangerous working conditions or extremely heavy, harmful, dangerous working conditions must be at least 5% or 7% higher than the salary levels of the jobs or titles with the same complexity but in normal working conditions, respectively[1]. As such, Employers should adjust the salary scale and salary table to be consistent with actual working conditions;
  • When Employers set a ceiling salary level for each position in the salary scale and salary table, local labour management agencies often ask why Employees’ experience and skills will get better with time but their salaries are limited. However, this risk is small because Employers can specify the bonus regime to increase the incomes for Employees;
  • To be consistent with the procedure and make the salary scale and table effective, Employers must consult the grassroots TUEC and disclose them at the workplace; and

Employers must also notify the district-level labour management agency of the place where the head office or the factory is based on the changes to the salary scale and table from time to time.

[1]Article 7.3 (c) Decree 49/2013/NĐ-CP dated 14/5/2013