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Monitor Prawa Pracy

no. 7/2016

Although the termination system is one of the most important sources of flexibility in employment, the Hungarian labour law reform of 2012 – definitely aiming flexibilisation – only limitedly touched upon this field. The main structure of the termination regime remained almost intact, except the termination of fixed-term employment and protection against dismissal. For the latter, especially the protection of union officials was weakened. Such downgraded protection raises questions of effective representation, if one remembers, that it is the same new act, which gave much more importance to unions through collective bargaining, opening the floor also to deviations from the Code to the detriment of the employee.

Tamás Gyulavári
Professor, Labour Law Department, Pázmány Péter Catholic University Budapest.
Gábor Kártyás
Associate Professor, Labour Law Department, Pázmány Péter Catholic University Budapest.
Abstract

Nonetheless, the significantly lowered sanctions against unlawful termination definitely reduces employers’ costs and burdens concerning termination, in our opinion flexibility should be offered only for those employers who play by the rules. It does not make sense to relax employment costs for employers breaching the law. Three years after the entry into force of the new Labour Code it seems to us that also the legislator acknowledged that the current system of sanctions for unlawful termination is not dissuasive enough. A pending amendment would double the measure of employees’ flat rate compensation, which would be one step back towards the former punitive sanctions. Besides, union officials would be entitled to request reinstatement in any case of unlawful termination which would positively affect their labour law protection. Thus the regulation of termination of employment still seems to be a field of continuous changes.

Keywords: termination of employment, reasons to dismissal, unlawful termination, protection for union officials agains dismissal.