Local council officials call strike over wages

Budapest, June 8 (MTI) – The MKKSZ union of public employees is organising a strike for local government employees, demanding a wage hike in that sector similar to the one offered recently to employees of district government offices.

Some one hundred of the union’s local chapters representing employees at mayoral offices and local councils have joined the strike call for June 22, Mrs Péter Boros, the head of MKKSZ, told a press conference on Wednesday. She said such a strike has been unprecedented in the union’s 25-year history.

MKKSZ has demanded a wage rise of 30 percent on average for local government officials as of October 1 this year.

The recently-adopted law on government officials only offers better conditions for district office employees, which means that the workforce is likely to shift from local councils to district offices. This could aggravate the already severe shortage of staff, she said.

Hungary’s local governments employ 36,749 people, of whom 24,058 have “not seen a single forint of a pay rise over the past eight years”, Mrs Boros insisted.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters