No doubt because of the ongoing crisis, an increasing number of employers in Hungary are believed to be violating regulations on work hours, forcing workers to do unpaid overtime. A recent piece on origo.hu illustrates the trend with the case of an employee of a multinational, who said their work contract had been modified at the end of last year, thus introducing flexible (kötetlen) work hours and making it impossible to account for their earlier overtime, while the number of tasks they were responsible for increased as result of layoffs.
According to the piece, the Hungarian Labor Inspectorate (OMMF) claims such cases have been steadily increasing in the past few years, and that proceedings were started against employers for violating work hour regulations in 35,000 cases last year alone.
While this number is pretty big, in reality it may be even bigger, because a lot of people being pressured to work overtime “for free” are probably reluctant to turn in their bosses, given the bleak job market. On the other hand, barely half of working-age Hungarians have a boss to actually turn in, so maybe it’s a wash.
The Labour Inspectorate (OMMF) ought to start with the policymakers that helped to create the situation in the first place. The economics here have gone south, and people cost way more than their equivalents elsewhere due in a large part to gov’t tax wedge. Rather than helping, HU PLC, has raised interest rates, re-arranged but not reduced the tax burden, added bureacracy, choked the municipalities of funds, starved consumers of money that would be used to, ah, consume… And of course, the multi’s (who btw have to be squeaky clean and therefore unlike the more pedestrian, invoice-buying local firms) have had to shed jobs while maintaining the same systems, levels of service while keeping the lights on.
This is another half-thought thru statement from people who you’d like to think, know better. These people empowered to do something don’t, opting instead to just rattle cages. And if they did do something, they’d be cutting off their proverbial noses. If this is such a major problem, then make headlines with some spectacular busts; rather than diddling the loose change (or whatever it is) in their pockets… This is akin to the tax evasion is all around us, but nobody ever gets done for it syndrome that Erik wrote about recently.
All talk but no thought.