Ministry of Youth, Family, Social Affairs, and Equal Opportunities Ministry of Employment and Labour National Report Fourth Report on the Implementation of the European Social Charter Submitted by the Government of the Republic of Hungary (for the period of 1 January to 31 December 2004) Budapest, March 2006 In accordance with Article 21 of the European Social Charter, the measures taken to give effect to the accepted provisions of the European Social Charter should be reported. Therefore, this National Report will address the application of the following articles, which are not part of the Charter’s hard core: Articles 2., 3., 7.(1), 8., 9., 10., 11., 14., 15., and 17. In addition, this National Report includes the Government’s responses to the European Commit- tee of Social Rights’ comments and questions on the execution of the aforementioned articles, included in its Conclusions XVII-2 released in March 2005. In accordance with Article 23 of the Charter, copies of this Report have been communicated to: - The Employee Side of the National Interest-Reconciliation Council, - The Employer Side of the National Interest-Reconciliation Council. 2 CONTENTS PAGE Article 2: The right to just conditions of work.................................................................................4 Article 3: The right to safe and healthy working conditions..........................................................38 Article 7: The right of children and young persons to protection ..................................................74 Article 8: The right of employed women to protection..................................................................83 Article 9: The right to vocational guidance....................................................................................92 Article 10: The right to vocational training....................................................................................96 Article 11: The right to protection of health ................................................................................123 Article 14: The right to benefit from social welfare services.......................................................170 Article 15: The right of physically or mentally disabled persons to vocational training, rehabilitation and social resettlement.....................................................................189 Article 17: The right of mothers and children to social and economic protection.......................208 Pieces of legislation referred to in the Report..............................................................................230 3 Article 2: The right to just conditions of work "With a view to ensuring the effective exercise of the right to just conditions of work, the Con- tracting Parties undertake: Article 2, Paragraph (1): to provide for reasonable daily and weekly working hours, the work- ing week to be progressively reduced to the extent that the increase of productivity and other relevant factors permit;" Question A Please indicate what statutory provisions apply in respect of the number of working hours, daily and weekly and the duration of the daily rest period. Act CXVIII of 2003, which amended Act XXII of 1992 on the Labour Code (hereinafter: the La- bour Code) took effect on 1 January 2004. This act includes the rules governing patterns of work when transitioning from standard time to summer time and back. When transitioning from sum- mer to standard time (in the autumn) it may happen that an employee working during the period of the transition may have a longer working day, or may have an abbreviated period of rest be- tween shifts (in the spring). Until now, labour law did not have any specific provision to deal with this situation. The law makes it possible to prolong working hours by one hour and to reduce periods of rest by one hour in keeping with European norms. However, periods of rest may only be reduced if the employee is employed in a job that differs from average – either in a job of a stand-by character, or in a continuous work pattern or shift job, or in seasonal work. Chapter X/A. of the Labour Code laying down the rules of telework (telecommuting) entered in force on May 1, 2004. With a view to the atypical nature of employment, the Labour Code laid down the rules deviating from the generally applicable provisions in a separate section. The essence of telework is the ability of the person to do his work at a location other than his ’of- ficial duty station’ at the premises or other facility of the employer but, generally, in the em- ployee’s own home, and contact between employer and employee is maintained through infor- mation technology and the actual work to be done is also performed with IT equipment. The gen- eral rule, contained in our previous National Report, is that unless a collective agreement or an agreement between employer and employee sets the pattern of work, overall working hours and the scheduling of daily working hours, the employer may set them. However, the chapter on tele- commuting states that in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, the employee doing the telecommuting sets his or her own schedule and the amount of work done in a given time frame. Act LXXXIV of 2003 on Certain Aspects of Performing Healthcare Activity went into effect on May 1, 2004. The law defines the basic regulations governing preventive-curative activities performed by doctors and other healthcare employees (hereinafter together: healthcare employ- ees) in a uniform manner regardless of the legal status within which the healthcare activity is per- formed. The law lays down the basic rules governing the pattern of work of persons who perform healthcare activity in employment relationship and in public service employment at healthcare providers (hereinafter, together: as employees). 4 It defines on-call duty to be spent at a place designated by the employer, and the concept of stand-by duty to be spent at a place chosen by the employee, in accordance with the specifics of healthcare provision, and sets the tasks to be performed during each of the duty services. The law allows overall working time to be handled in six-month blocks. Within these blocks – as defined by the employer – the working time may not exceed 48 hours/week. The law allows a healthcare employee to do voluntary extraordinary work. It is mandatory that the agreement to do this extraordinary work be set in writing and it may not exceed 12 hours/week. The law states that a healthcare employee may not be forced to work extraordinary work. In addition, there is a basic guarantee set down to the effect that employees may not be discriminated against on the basis of whether they are willing to work extraordinary work or not. The law sets the number of hours a healthcare employee may work – including extraordinary work ordered by the employer and/or undertaken voluntarily – at 60 hours/week combined. The duration of healthcare activity per calendar day may not exceed 12 hours even if the healthcare employee is employed by several healthcare service providers or works as both an employee and a private provider. The foregoing shall be applicable, as appropriate, to a healthcare employee who is a public em- ployee or works in military service or in the service of the armed forces. European Union regulations play a decisive role in determining daily and weekly working time and rest periods. Hungary transposed the European Union directives at the time it joined the EU. At the same time, an unresolved issue on both EU and Hungarian level is how to solve the con- tradictory situation that evolved following the rulings of the European Court of Justice on the in- terpretation of on-call duty time. This particularly affects healthcare but it also can affect the La- bour Code, Act XXXIII of 1992 on the Legal Status of Public Employees and Act XXIII of 1992 on the Legal Status of Civil Servants and special sectors such as education, the judiciary, prose- cutorial authorities, and justice administration employees where – similarly to the Hungarian Armed Forces and armed bodies – there are separate laws containing special rules concerning the organisation of working time. Question B Please indicate what rules concerning normal working hours and extraordinary work are usual in collective agreements, and what the scope of these rules is. Please see response to Question D) in current Article. Question C Please indicate the average working hours in practice for each major professional category. Please see response to Question D) in current Article. Question D 5 Please indicate to what extent working hours have been reduced by legislation, by collective agreements, or in practice during the reference period and, in particular, as a result of in- creased productivity. The rules on reporting the signing, amendment, cancellation or termination of collective agree- ments changed during 2004. The basic provisions requiring that they be reported to the Ministry of Employment and Labour were raised to the level of law as of January 1, 2004, through the in- sertion of Section 41/A into the Labour Code. Decree 2/2004 (I. 15.) FMM of the Minister of Employment and Labour, which took effect on January 18, 2004, lays down the detailed rules for reporting and registering collective agree- ments. This decree invalidated Decree 19/1997 (XII. 18.) MüM of the Minister of Labour on the order of registering collective agreements and the related obligation to provide data. Employers (including economic operators) are mandated to provide