Vietnam’s staff-starved factories implore employees to come back

Millions of workers who fled virus outbreak are too scared to return to make the world’s winter clothes and Christmas gifts.

Whether yoga pants and Air Jordans appear under Christmas trees in the U.S. and Europe may come down to Vietnamese assembly line workers like Le Thi My.

My is part of an exodus of factory employees who have gone back to their home villages from Vietnam’s southern industrial belt, the epicenter of the nation’s worst coronavirus outbreak. Millions more are poised to follow, as months-long mobility restrictions that confined workers to cramped housing recently eased.

“We had almost nothing left but fear,” said My, who is back in her home in Tay Ninh Province along the Cambodian border after leaving Ho Chi Minh City. “We saw many people die of Covid in our neighborhood.”