Why is Hungary spiraling down a dark path?

(written by lawrence krubner, however indented passages are often quotes). You can contact lawrence at: lawrence@krubner.com, or follow me on Twitter.

The laws insist on worker protection, but the reality is high corruption where everyone ignores the law:

I could hire 12 people with €760 net salary, but I don’t. I tell you why. You could work for my service provider company in a nice office. It’s not telemarketing, it’s not a scam. You would do serious work that requires high skills, 8 hours daily, only weekdays. I would employ you legally, I would pay your taxes and social security. I could give such a job to a dozen people, but I will not, and here I explain why.

I wouldn’t hire a woman.

The reason is very simple: women give birth to children. I don’t have the right to ask if she still wanted to. If I had the right, and she would answer, she could deceive me deliberately or she could change her mind.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any problem with women giving birth to children. That’s how I was born and that’s how my child was born. I wouldn’t hire a woman because when she gets pregnant, she goes for a 3 years maternity leave, during which I can’t fire her. If she wants two children, the vacation is 6 years long.

Of course, work has to be done, so I would have to hire somebody who works instead of her while she is spending her long holiday years. But not only I couldn’t fire her while she’s away, I couldn’t fire her when she comes back either. So I would have to fire the one who’s been working instead of her for the whole time. When a woman would come back from the maternity leave I would be legally forced to increase her salary to the present level in her position, and also, give out her normal vacation days, that she has collected during the maternity leave. When she would come back to work, she would start with 2-4 months of fully paid vacation.

I wouldn’t hire people over 50 either.

Not that I have any problem with the most experienced professionals. I wouldn’t hire them, because they are soon in the protected age. And then I would be trapped with them, similar to the trap with employing women. You can’t fire people in the protected age, so I would have to pay the salary and its total cost even if he or she doesn’t work well or at least up to acceptable standards. I couldn’t fire the protected employee, but someone would have to do the job right, so I would have to hire another person. It’s all right with me if they’re protected, but then I won’t hire them.

I would only hire 25-50 years old men.

They’re also risky to hire, because I don’t have the right to fire them either, if for any reason (I don’t have enough income, or I don’t like how they work) I want to. There’s a high risk that they will go to court, and there’s a high chance they will win. But this risk I would be prepared to handle.

…The competition sells the same service, but illegally, under really crappy circumstances, charging €9 per hour. They simply pocket the money, without even issuing an invoice, it doesn’t even include the VAT. They don’t have to take any responsibilty, there are no warranties, they officialy don’t even do anything, there’s not even an official, legal trace of their existence. They don’t have to rent an office, hire an accountant. By doing this 5 hours a day, they can easily make €1,000. They would point their middle fingers to my €760 job offer, where they wouldn’t be allowed to do crappy work, but show up in time every day and meet very high professional standards in their work, they wouldn’t be allowed to defraud the customers, and if they did, they would be fired.

Hungary is now the most right-wing country in Europe. It is about to become something like a dictatorship:

Post external references

  1. 1
    http://andorjakab.blog.hu/2012/01/06/this_is_why_i_don_t_give_you_a_job
  2. 2
    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/the-unconstitutional-constitution/
Source