Wage-setting in Hungary - From a Labour Law Perspective

Abstract

The aim of the present paper is to analyse the structure and main labour-law related issues of wage-setting in Hungary. First, after the introduction, in Chapter 2, the paper deals with the hierarchy of the different sources of wage-setting. In this context, three main levels – and their problematic issues – are analyzed: a) statutory, central-level wage-setting (including the national minimum wage); b) collective bargaining and wage-bargaining; c) individual bargaining, the role of the employment contract, and the main tendencies of corporate practices in wage-setting. Chapter 3 describes some selected, remarkable examples for especially flexible and overly inflexible regulatory solutions in terms of wage-setting. Chapter 4 takes account of the state of play of the equal pay for equal work principle within Hungarian labour law. Chapter 5. concludes and sums up the paper by briefly sketching some of the most important and relevant observations of the EU’s economic governance process in relation to the Hungarian mechanism of wage-setting.

Keywords

• wage-setting
• minimum wage
• wage-bargaining
• flexibility
• equal pay for equal work