Hungarians fearful of foreign workers – Survey

Budapest, January 7 (MTI) – Hungarians notice the consequences of foreign employees arriving in the country less than their peers in southern and western Europe but still have a negative attitude to inflows of foreign workers, HR consulting firm Randstad said today, citing the company’s recent Workmonitor 2013 survey.

There were twice as many Hungarians who thought the working environment had changed negatively due to foreign employees than those who reported a positive change.

Only a third of Hungarians said that working together with foreign employees added value to their jobs.

“The international survey shows that foreign workers are generally seen in a more negative light in countries where competition on the labour market has increased correspondingly. But the situation is different in Hungary and several other central European countries; for instance in the Czech Republic, where foreigners pose a relatively low pressure on the job market but they are still assessed negatively,” Randstad Hungary managing director Sandor Baja said in a statement.

This is probably rooted in fear of the unknown: the proportion of foreign employees is relatively low in Hungary and people think that a change may have negative consequences, he added.

Figures of the Central Statistical Office show that 141,000 foreign nationals live in Hungary in 2013, representing less than 1.5 percent of the population.

Photo: www.ger-mania.hu

Source: http://hungarymatters.hu/