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Legal interpretation issues regarding the status of the trade unions
79-95Views:663The unique purpose and role of trade unions is the protection of the employees’ social and economic interests. As compared to the previous concept, the applicable labour code introduced a conceptually new approach with respect to collective labour law, including the purpose of trade unions, reducing the trade unions’ rights to such a minimum level which shall be generally granted for a civil organization operating in the interest of a certain purpose. In my study, some legal interpretation questions –without the ambition to be exhaustive – that arise in practice come under analysis, which highlight in a crystal clear manner the question as to what sort of practical issues are raised and interpretation possibilities are opened by certain items of the Hungarian labour law regulation in connection with the legal status of the trade unions and the exercise of their rights.
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Digitization at Work: Expanding Horizons with Loopholes
61-80Views:423The focus of the study is on the emergence and spread of digitization in employment. In this context, the study presents the forms of work that use digitization. On the other hand, it describes the labour market effects of digitalization. The study looks in detail at how COVID-19 has changed the role of teleworking and the home office in employment. This is followed by the presentation of the Hungarian labour law regulation, which deals exclusively with telework. The study makes two proposals to address the codification gap. On the one hand, in connection with application-based work, the introduction of the status of a person with a similar legal status to an employee, which was regulated in the draft of the Labour Code. On the other hand, to impose employer obligations (retraining, job offers) in connection with the spread of automation and robotics in order to prevent dismissal.
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Collective Agreement’s Status in Law
Views:542The collective agreement is a Janus-faced legal phenomenon. From one side it has the nature of a contractual relationship where the parties have the right to determine the content of the contract, also including the choice itself, whether they establish it or not. On the other hand, the collective agreement acts as a legal norm as well. From this aspect its regulations are also obligatory for those persons who were not involved during the set-up process, or even for those who disagrees with some parts of the document. Therefore it is a crucial question in labour law as to how these contracts are handled by law. The Hungarian Labour Code came into force in 2012 contained an approach in which the legislator wanted to empower the legal status of collective agreement. To achieve this goal, in some parts the Act gives the parties the possibility to deviate from the law and to customize the norms in order to make it fit their current relationship. In this paper I examine the nature of the Collective Agreement and show its specialities in the Hungarian legal environment.
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Is the Implementation of Home Office Legally Feasible? The Criteria for Home Office and its Framework Within Employment Law
59-82Views:1161The year of 2020 was the challenge of “home office”. Although, the publicity uses the term of “home office” as the legal construction of working from home, this approach is misleading. Moreover, the Hungarian Labour Code does not contain any regulation about “home office”, while this legal source embraces two other methods in connection to work from home. These legal institutes are the teleworking and the legal relationship of outworkers. The problem with the aforementioned legal institutes is that the parties must take into account several rules and must apply these solutions regularly, on a permanent basis. However according to the legal literature, the “home office” is created by the economic and human resource management practice of the employers, where they intend to employ the workers mainly at home irregularly, on an ad-hoc basis. At the same time, “home office” does not have a legal framework in the Hungarian Labour Code, therefore the legal literature has been trying to find a real solution for this employment method in the general norms of the Labour Code. In the following article we are going to use the home office definition of the literatures and highlight the background legal institutes and concepts of this working method. Although we are going to set our opinion about which legal institute may be applicable in this sense, in the conclusion we are going to emphasise that legislation and rules regarding “home office” are indispensable.
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Trends, Directions, Legislative Efforts: the Abolition of the Civil Servant Status
179-195Views:130One of the most spectacular changes to the Hungarian employment system in recent years is that many former civil servants (‘közalkalmazott’) have lost their status and come under the scope of the Labour Code or have been subject to newly created status laws. As the Act on Civil Servants (‘Kjt.’) applies now only a few groups of civil servants, having been emptied out by successive reforms, it is not surprising that the future existence of the Act and of the autonomous status of civil servants is being called into question. But what factors have led to the gradual, and in recent years accelerating, decline of the Kjt.? Is the 'disappearance' of civil servants the result of internal processes that rationally follow from the development of the law, or is it the result of independent economic and political considerations? What was the original role of the Kjt. in the system of employment relationships and how can its ‘emptying’ be understood in an international and historical context? The study argues that this process is not an inevitable consequence of legal doctrinal developments, but rather the result of legislative efforts to abolish the uniform legal status of human service providers. Hungarian legislation is no exception to the neoliberal and neo-Weberian trends, while the comparative advantages previously enjoyed by civil servants are eroding and the regulation is becoming highly fragmented.