Companies not applying ‘slave provisions’?

There are “hardly any” businesses in Hungary that have resorted to contested stipulations in the labour code under which employees could be forced to do involuntary overtime work, daily Magyar Nemzet reported on Monday, citing trade union reports.

Last year’s labour code amendment, known among critics as the “slave law”, raised the cap for annual overtime from 250 to 400 hours, allowing companies a three-year period for paying for them.

According to the paper,

the unions have not received signals suggesting that businesses would be mulling introduction of a higher number of overtime hours in January, either.

Melinda Mészáros, head of the Liga trade union federation, told the paper that no cases of employers pressing their employees to sign contracts with higher overtime hours had been reported.

A few weeks ago, the Budapest assembly banned implementation of the overtime work law at municipal companies. In his proposal, Karácsony said that the law would seriously impact employees who could be made to work a “drastically increased” number of overtime hours.

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