Govt looks to better regulate casual workforce

Speaking on Wednesday (July 16) Judit Székely, the State Secretary of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour, said the proportion of companies employing people with casual worker permits nationally is relatively high, exceeding 20%. Records are frequently incomplete there are often “a number of irregularities with regard to the special worker permit,” she said. The new regulation aims to simplify administration: among other things, to put an end to paper based record keeping and introduce instead mandatory electronic reporting.
It is hoped to finally apply uniform regulation of employees with casual worker permits to  all sectors of the economy.
The government is planning to end the limitation on the employment period for the employees; however, some constraints are expected to remain .
The State Secretary also mentioned that the government is planning to abolish the so-called taxation tickets. Instead, the government intends to define a percentage of contribution for the employment of people with casual work permits.
Székely explained that the number of employees working under casual worker permits increases markedly in the spring and summer months, to as high as 50–70,000 people, nationally.

Seasonal

Székely stated that it is chiefly the seasonal industries – especially tourism (which makes up almost half of the companies) and agriculture (some 40% of companies) – that employ this kind of casual labor force.
The number of casual employees with a valid permit is put at  1m. However, there are significant differences amongst the regions and the counties in the way they treat such employees.
Casual employees seem to be preferred mostly in counties with low activity rates, ie, in regions with high unemployment rates, primarily in the Northern Plains and the northern Hungarian regions.