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Thousands rally against Hungary's overtime work law, PM Orban

Other News Materials 6 January 2019 02:43 (UTC +04:00)
Thousands marched through Budapest’s city center on Saturday to protest against a new law that allows employers to ask staff to work up to 400 hours per year of overtime
Thousands rally against Hungary's overtime work law, PM Orban

Thousands marched through Budapest’s city center on Saturday to protest against a new law that allows employers to ask staff to work up to 400 hours per year of overtime, Trend reported citing Reuters.

Opposition groups have staged several rallies in the past weeks in the Hungarian capital and other cities against what they said was an authoritarian rule of conservative nationalist Viktor Orban.

Saturday’s rally, organized by opposition parties, trade unions and civic groups, mainly targeted the new labor law dubbed by critics as “slave law”.

Some of the protesters posted on social media or carried banners calling for a “national strike”.

The modification to the labor code passed by parliament last month has faced intense criticism and sparked the biggest street protest in over a year. Potentially, it could add two extra hours to an average work day, or the equivalent of an extra workday per week.

Zoltan Mucsi, the head of steelmaker Dunaferr’s Vasas trade union, said it was undemocratic that the government did not discuss the labor code changes with the unions.

Some of the main trade union groups may resort to a strike if the government does not sit down with them to negotiate, he told Reuters.

Trade union membership in Hungary is estimated at below a tenth of the workforce, about half the level in Germany, according to data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The past weeks’ anti-government rallies were also against a law that sets up new courts which critics say could be politically manipulated, and against bias in state-controlled media.

The earlier protests have been mostly peaceful, though there were some clashes with police who used tear gas.

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