Career-starting teachers in Hungary get the 2nd lowest wage in the EU

Opposition LMP called for an immediate payrise to civil servants at an online press conference by party spokesman József Gál on Sunday.

Gál told the press conference streamed on Facebook that the government had been neglecting workers in the public sectors, including in education, in the past 12 years.

The cost of living has increased significantly and the economic and energy crisis hit especially hard on those that support themselves from public sector wages, he said. Career-starting teachers earn 207,000 forints (EUR 510) per month in Hungary, which is the second lowest sum in the European Union after Bulgaria, he added.

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Teachers and special education teachers must be given an immediate payrise of 45 percent and then their wage adjusted to inflation twice a year, he said. Some 80 percent of schools suffer from a shortage of teaching staff as a result of low wages, with around 15,000 teachers “missing from the profession”, he added.

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Source: MTI