In his working paper the author Volker Bellgart argues that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has a strong potential to help improving working conditions in Vietnam by empowering the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour, the state trade union. Furthermore he points out that CSR cannot be sustainably implemented without the participation of the trade union. This might be an irritating idea at first, since CSR used to be a product of the anti regulatory “neoliberal” agenda. Therefore the paper first examines, that the discourse under the CSR-label has changed towards a broad and diverse discussion, which pursues to achieve a “sustainable” social and ecologic development through the participation of “stakeholders”. It will further argue that this approach is fitting the current state of labour law reform in Vietnam, and might help the former mass-organisation to adapt to its new role in the “socialist-oriented market economy” of Vietnam.