Hungary
Childcare union launches campaign on workplace clothing
The BDDSz childcare workers' union has launched a photo campaign to highlight the failure of many workplaces in the sector to provide appropriate workplace clothing for employees. The union points out that this is a legal duty and all the more important during the current COVID-19 pandemic. According to the union some 40% of institutions are failing to abide by the law, rising to 70% of those involved in child protection.
EPSU protests against attack on culture workers' pay and conditions
EPSU has sent letters to the prime minister and leaders of political groups in parliament protesting at legislation that will remove public service status from over 20000 workers in libraries, museums, archives, culture centres, theatres and orchestras. This is a group of workers that is mainly low paid and whose pay has been frozen for over 10 years. The additional employment protection of public service status is one of their few main benefits. The government is using its emergency to push through the change at breakneck speed without the usual parliamentary process or consultation with

Hungary: EPSU backs culture workers in protest against ending public service status
EPSU has today sent a letter to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Minister for Human Resources, Miklós Kásler, to protest over government plans to change the legal status of culture workers – those working in museums, libraries, archives and public cultural institutes.

On the National Day of Hungarian Culture, Hungarian workers in the cultural sector demand better pay!
EPSU affiliates KKDSZ are holding a demonstration to protest the unacceptable low level of pay across the culture sector and the lack of any pay increase for their members for over 10 years.
Union action on pay on day of culture
The KKDSZ culture workers' union has launched a petition highlighting low pay in the sector and plans to hand it to the minister of human resources on 22 January, the national day of culture. The union will highlight the contradiction of government claims that national culture is important while failing to increase pay for museum, library and other culture workers for over 10 years or engage in proper collective bargaining. The union is planning a number of events in Budapest and other cities. EPSU send a message of solidarity.

Public debt, organizing and EU policies in Central European constituency
Addressing public debt is an important issue for unions. The constituency started with a PSI seminar of this topic. Debt is not an issue in isolation and is linked to the changes that have happened in the global economy over the last 30 years. The way debt crises play out have devastating effects on
Capacity building project for the hospital sector in Central, East and Southern Europe started
On 28 March 2019 EPSU participated, together with its representatives of the two national affiliates from Romania, Sanitas, and Croatia, HSSMS-MT, in the kick-off meeting of the joint HOSPEEM-EPSU project focusing on strengthening social dialogue in the hospital sector that will run in 2019 and 2020.
Anti-"slave" law campaign continues
In the latest stage of the trade union campaign against the "slave" law that allows employers to signficantly increase overtime work, the MASZSZ confederation has asked the European Commission to intervene. The confederation believes that the increase on the overtime limit to 400 hours a year and the possibility for compensation for additional hours to be spread over 36 months could be in contravention of the Working Time Directive and it wants the European Commission to investigate.
Unions mobilise against "slave" law
Unions mobilised for the latest demonstration against the so-called slave law that increases overtime limits in the labour code and relaxes rules on employer payments for overtime working. Along with a national demonstration on 19 January in Budapest there were around 60 events and actions around the country involving trade unions, civil society and political parties. Public service trade unions used the demonstrations to highlight some broader demands include for wage increases, a strengthening of the right to strike and a return of cafeteria benefits that were cut last summer. EPSU sent a