Jobbik-Conservatives launches signature drive to demand ‘decent’ wages

The opposition Jobbik-Conservatives party has launched a signature drive demanding “normal wages”, senior officials of the party told a press conference on Monday.

Jobbik-Conservatives Group leader György László Lukács said the aim was to “keep on the agenda at all forums” the necessity to raise wages in Hungary.

“Successive governments in the past three decades have … abandoned Hungarian workers and allowed highly qualified people to be employed with low wages and used the low level of wages to attract foreign investors to the country”, he said.

For the past 30 years, the wage gap between Hungary and the European average has “continually increased”, Lukács said, adding that “several countries that started from the same level as Hungary now have much higher average wages”.

Z. Dániel Kárpát, vice-president of Jobbik-Conservatives and member of parliament, said that his party rejects the “institutionalised scam” of the past three decades, which asked Hungarians to accept temporary austerity with the promise of a better life in the future, and instead promotes a programme of support for active Hungarian citizens who want to advance through their talents.

He added that their concept would not increase the burden on Hungarian micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, but would address the current situation with budget money – mainly from tax revenues, which have soared due to inflation – and a wage development fund created with EU funds.

In addition, he noted, they would like to renegotiate with the government the strategic agreements with the multinationals “so that Hungarian wages at least slowly converge with the EU average”.