Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2022, published 111st ILC session (2023)

Collective Bargaining Convention, 1981 (No. 154) - Hungary (Ratification: 1994)

Article 5 of the Convention. Material scope of collective bargaining in public owned entities. The Committee refers to its comments under the Protection of the Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949 (No. 98).

Reclassification of several groups of public employees and access to collective bargaining. The Committee notes from the information provided by the Government that while Act XXXIII of 1992 on the legal status of public servants remains in force, several groups of employees (i.e. public servants employed by national defence organization, in vocational training, certain health care providers, cultural institutions and the Eötvös Loránd Research Network) have been removed from its scope and included under new acts regulating legal relationship, and in some cases under the Labour Code. The Committee notes that according to the workers’ group of the National ILO Council, the modification of the legal relationship of public employees was done without the necessary consultation with the representative workers’ organizations of the sectors concerned and that social dialogue was omitted during the conversion of the legal relationship. The Committee also takes note of the observation that the change in legal status effectively excluded the above employees from previous national interest reconciliation forums available for public servants. In view of the above and taking into account the recommendations of the Committee on Freedom of Association in the context of case No. 3399 (para. 426 of Report No. 396, October 2021) on the collective bargaining rights of persons in health service legal relationship, theCommittee requests the Government to provide its comments on the workers’ group observations with respect to: (i) the alleged lack of consultation prior to the referred reclassification and (ii) the ways in which the reclassification of public legal relationship to employment relationship under the Labour Code may affect the right of these groups to collective bargaining.