Burden Of Proof and Evidence Governance in Employment Termination Disputes: Implications from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

This study examines the burden of proof and evidence governance in employment termination disputes through an integrated perspective combining transaction-cost economics, information asymmetry, and the reliability of electronic evidence. The research adopts a qualitative case-study design that combines doctrinal legal analysis with a comparative reading of First-Instance Labor Judgment No. 36/2025/LĐ-ST, Appellate Labor Judgment No. 50/2026/LĐ-PT, and the related enforcement decision in Ho Chi Minh City. Labor-market indicators are used only to establish context and are not treated as evidence of dispute prevalence. The findings show that evidentiary responsibility follows the structure of information control: the employee must establish the initiating facts and the rights for which protection is sought, while the employer must explain managerial records that it creates, controls, or retains when those records are necessary to assess the contested facts. For electronic evidence, probative value depends on a verification chain covering data source, attribution, integrity, and contextual consistency. The study proposes standardized termination dossiers, evidence-control mapping, targeted data preservation, and a structured review process for digital evidence. These measures may reduce verification costs, mitigate information asymmetry, and strengthen the governance of employment relations.