Civil servants may strike

Approximately 20 thousand people, the members of 30 civil/servant trade unions participated in the demonstration held on Kossuth tér November 29, to protest against the restrictions concerning civil servants.


The chairmen of the trade unions handed a petition to Péter Maxim, state secretary of the Prime Minister’s Office. They were demonstrating against the group layoffs, the revoking of the13th month stipend in the 2009 budget and the freezing of the wages.
The civil servants prepared to go on strike from January 12 if they cannot come to an agreement with the government by then. The strike committee has been negotiating with the government for weeks on but there are no sufficient results yet and the December 1 closed conciliation between the government and the trade unions proved to be unsuccessful again. The trade unions refused to accept the government’s offer of receiving approximately two weeks of compensation instead of the full 13th month wage. Péter Kónya, chairman of the Trade Union of Armed Forces said that the offer is unacceptable and they will start the preparations for the strike. The Uniform Civil Servant Strike Committee, grouping the trade unions of 23 sectors will decide about the length of the strikes at its December 8 summit as the strike time frame various sectors can undertake differs from each other.
Without agreement it is possible that educational institutes, kindergartens, hospitals, employment offices and APEH workers will be on strike on the same day, said Józesf Fehér, the vice chairman Cooperational Forum of Trade Unions.
Tacit support
The base of negotiations for the Armed Forces is that they receive the full amount of their lawful compensation including the 13th month salary; we acknowledge that there is a crisis and accept that commodity wages will not increase but we cannot accept the decrease of the commodity wages, said Kónya.
The parliament has accepted the main numbers of the 2009 budget and also agreed on freezing the civil servant wages on November 25.
After the demonstration the government’s communication office said that the government knows and understands the demands of the civil servant trade unions and is willing to fulfill all if they can be fitted into the budgetary ceiling that was accepted November 25.

The BpSun Staff

03.12.2008