I. Priorities in SZEF's activity in 1999 - 2000

1. Improvement of the waging situation of employees in the public service sphere

Ever since its foundation (in 1990) the Forum for the Cooperation of Trade Unions (SZEF) has been regarding its highlighted interest representation task to perceivably improve the extremely poor waging conditions of the employees in the public sphere. In the first half of the period (between 1990 and 1996) since the change of Hungary's political regime, the real value of the wages earned by public servants and public officials dramatically declined. It lagged far behind the average wages level of both, the national economy and the competitive sphere and it reached merely 10 to 15% of the Western-European average. A slight improvement started after the agreement on the waging of public servants concluded with the socialist-liberals headed Government for three years in 1996: the real value of earnings in the public sphere grew by 1% to 2% in 1997 and by 4% to5% in 1998. This positive tendency was then broken by the civil-conservative government that after coming into office (in 1998) disregarded the agreement it had concluded with the previous government and froze the wages in the public sphere by 1999.

On November 14, 1998 SZEF protested on a rally held in a firm spirit in the Budapest Sports Hall and on March 20, 1999 on a mass demonstration, attended by 30 thousand people, in front of the Parliament building against the wage freeze, in both cases initiating negotiations with the Government. However, the Government did not respond to those actions and offers for negotiation at that time. SZEF urged the negotiations in press releases and on October 28, 1999 in an other letter submitted to the Prime Minister in which SZEF proposed him to conclude an Agreement on the line-up of wages in the medium run. This time, the Prime Minister responded and accepted the proposal on the preparation of the agreement on it. A long negotiation process for one and a quarter years took place which resulted in a compromise agreement on March 9, 2001, with some other, non-SZEF public service unions joining it as well.

Of the union claims some achievements were made to stipulate in the agreement governmental promises concerning several key issues affecting the public sphere, such as

a) The wages line-up program

of the public sphere began. In a period of three years the real wages of public officials (employees in the state and local administration sphere) escalated by 70% in three years. In addition to the general wages promotion in the public sphere some further wage increases are going to be made, in some public service areas, for health care professionals, trade employees with medium degree qualification working for welfare institutions, instructors and research workers employed in high education sphere from January 1, teachers/educators, professional employees working in the cultural sphere as well as for the professional employees with high degree qualification working for welfare institutions from September 1. The Government undertook a binding obligation in writing to make inflationary wages increases. If the initial values (inflation and the development of GDP) considered at the time of the annual wages promotions happen to change throughout the year, then the extent of wages increase is going to be adjusted by an interaction of the union.

b) Development of the up-to-date promotion and career scheme of public servants

• In a first step of this exercise a new act is to come into existence as early as in 2001 that considerably improves the working conditions, social status and financial appreciation of public servants.
• The Government undertakes to review also the position of the public servants in 2001 and to prepare measures reconciled with the unions so as to harmonize the legal regulation with the profession of public servants, to modernize their remuneration and to create a more advantageous framework in the public sphere.

c) Improvement of interest reconciliation

• The Government undertook the obligation to promote the more efficient functioning of the forums of the welfare dialog on sector, sub-sector and municipality (local administration) levels.
• The Government gave way to the claim of the union that a nationwide inter-sector level interest reconciliation forum of public servants has to be created which is going to fill the function of KIÉT (Interest Reconciliation Council of Budgetary Institutions) which the Government terminated unilaterally. The new forum has to launch its operations by the end of the first half of 2001. The relevant MP motion has already been submitted to Parliament.

d) Participation of the Union in the preparatory program for EU admission

It is stipulated in the agreement: the Government allows also the union officials to take part in the programs, developed and financed by the Government, which are aimed at Hungary's preparation for EU admission in the public sphere.

2. Employment situation in the public sphere

SZEF has been paying particular attention for several years, such as in 1999 and 2000, to retain the public service jobs and secured employment to the extent it is possible and SZEF regards them its priority activities. Our Confederation protested in declarations and executive statements against headcount reductions - forced by government orders or financial means - leaving untouched the tasks of public service institutions. (The 1999's state budget stipulated a headcount reduction of 3% in the public administration sphere. Although the Government did not oblige the public service institutions for headcount reduction in 2000, the financing conditions forced them to make constraints in their headcount management and, in many cases to expressively reduce their headcount.)

SZEF has the firm opinion that the centrally ordered headcount reductions that are unjustified and lacking an analysis of the institutional functions are jeopardizing the safe provision of the public service tasks as there are no more general headcount reserves in the public sphere. For this reason, it is necessary to investigate in concrete terms the headcount situation and responsibilities of the given sector and professional community.

3. Participation in the reform processes in the public service area

Ever since its foundation SZEF has been regarding its priority task to take part in the reform processes of the public service sphere. This effort was a decisive element in the activities of our Confederation. The governments functioning since the change of the regime have taken numerous measures under the title of the public service reform. These measures were, however, not thorough ones that could be fit into the reform process; they were rather improvisations induced by timely political motivations mainly of financial constraints. It was quite natural that they could not bring the expected results. SZEF criticized these ad hoc measures, expressing at the same time that it deemed necessary the reforms prepared with participation of the affected professional and employee representative organs and supported them.

SZEF holds the firm opinion of that the preparation of the reform steps can only be based on the collective and simultaneous consideration of the social impacts, professional aspects and finance policy conditions, as well as on the rational compromise of the different interests. We claim that the reform may not jeopardize the basic provision of the citizens; it may not increase further their expenses of using public services and it may not involve major firing of employees in the public sphere.

Our Confederation has not only made critical comments but it has made every effort to make its contribution to the development of the reform process by thoroughly analyzing the reform steps necessary and possible in each particular public service area. To this end we organized several international conferences addressing the same issue.

In November, 1996 we organized a two day international conference titled "The role of the unions in the transformation of public service" in which, in addition to the Hungarian participants, Austrian, German, British and Slovakian union leaders and the representatives of the Public Service International (PSI) presented their experience and opinion.

In April, 1998 we organized a professional conference of scientific demand on the possibilities of uniform regulation on the employees in the public service sphere. State lawyers, public administration experts and the leaders of the unions with a decisive role in the public service sphere delivered their presentations.

In April, 1999 we held a conference on the trends of modernization of the Hungarian public service regime and the experiences in the European modernization where in addition to Hungarian, British and German public administration leaders and the representative of the European Federation of Public Service Unions, Chancellery Minister dr. István Stumpf delivered a paper.

In November, 2000 we organized, with the participation of five other representative union confederations, an international conference on the necessity and potential trends of the health reform where Hungarian, British, Austrian, Belgian, Danish, French, German professionals and union leaders outlined their experiences and opinion. The Minister of Health of the Hungarian Government delivered a lecture in this event as well. The participants formed their opinion in a statement on facilitating the solution to the vital problems of the health sector.

4. Furthering the normal operation of the institution of interest reconciliation system

SZEF continued to make efforts in 1999 and 2000 so as to assure the functioning of the interest reconciliation institutions in line with their mission. SZEF had made critical comments during the office period of both coalition governments on the non-optimum and non-full-scale operation and malfunctioning of the interest reconciliation process. Yet, the system has functioned. However, the civil-conservative government taking office in 1998 has unilaterally terminated the most important macro level elements of the interest reconciliation regime developed until date and the Interest Reconciliation Council as well as the Interest Reconciliation Council of the Budgetary Institutions. The Government created new forums to replace them without the agreement of the social partners that operated formally and rarely; their activity was mostly limited to sheer consultation and the introduction of the government decisions and no new institution has been created by date to replace KIÉT (Interest Reconciliation Council of Budgetary Institutions), the uniform and inter-sector interest reconciliation forum of the public service sphere. (It is under preparation as it was mentioned earlier in this document.)

SZEF took every opportunity possible - including the negotiations between SZEF and the Government - to criticize the government's behavior of undervaluing the social role of interest reconciliation and trying to limit the interest representative and interest reconciliation function of the unions to job level. Our Confederation claimed in declarations and statements that the Government failed to operate KIÉT, albeit there was no act declaring its termination. We also expressed our dissatisfaction in relation to that the efficiency of the interest reconciliation forums of sector level was also low, or no such forums existed in the public service area at all.

II. SZEF and other confederations and trade unions

The second congress of SZEF held in 1999 infused in the confederation's program that in line with its behavior since its foundation, SZEF is making every effort to build balanced relations of mutual benefits with every union federation and trade union which is interested on the footing of solidarity and equality in cooperation of good intention. We are supporting in this spirit the better cooperation between our confederations on the macro level issues affecting the job community.

We participate in the activity of the Cooperation Council (the institutionalized joint discussion body of the confederation leaders) aimed at serving and encouraging the expansion of cooperation of the six confederations. Although in the very moment we do not deem it timely to give grounds to the efforts made to amalgamate our confederation into a uniform organization, we find it important to expand the possibilities of cooperation on national, local and medium levels as well.

In striving for cooperation SZEF also participates in developing and implementing joint union projects (research and education programs) and in organizing joint actions. Such a social event was recently the mass demonstration in the Budapest Sports Hall organized by the union confederations in November 2000, protesting against the intention of changing the Labor Code in a way that is disadvantageous for the employees, or the mass demonstration held in March 2001, at the Heroes square in Budapest which was participated by 35 thousand people who also protested against the negative changes in the labor regulations.

In the recent years several confederations (not always all of them) organized the May Day festival on 1st of May in the framework of a joint event to replace the formerly separated celebrations. In October, 2000 we participated in the vintage entertainment organized for the first time which was a friendly meeting of the six confederations and their member organizations; political scientists, sociologists and union leaders attended the ceremony where a panel discussion was held on the topic of what are the possibilities to make the union efforts more efficient.

SZEF deems that the joint actions in which only the confederations interested in a given theme participate are strengthening the cooperation. SZEF does not regard the decision of the federations to be absent for lack of interest or any other reason from such events as a behavior that is weakening the union.

We think that the close bilateral cooperation of the confederations functioning in the same or relative area is an important and progressive action. There has been cooperation of this nature among the confederations in the two public service areas, SZEF and ÉSZT (Confederation of Unions of Professionals) in largely various forms. We hold joint meetings of the leaders of our organizations to discuss the timely issues of the interest representation efforts, hold joint press conferences and release joint statements. On the basis of our positive experiences the two confederations are now planning to further deepen our cooperation by establishing a Public Service Union, thus making a better use of the coordinated operational possibilities offered by the infrastructure and expert staff of the two confederations including the advantages of international relations, coordinating or jointly performing the European integration, education and training efforts. SZEF seeks after sound bilateral relations to maintain with external trade unions or with those that belong to other confederations in the spirit that SZEF naturally respects their belonging to an other organization. Such relations are held in the forms of invitations to events and discussions, giving or requesting information/opinion on timely issues, etc.

III. SZEF' s international activity

SZEF has been taking an active part in the efforts of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), it maintains close relations with the Public Service International, as well as with the public service unions of several European states. Our Confederation is interested in coordinating the trade unions of the Continent, in that SZEF wishes to learn the experiences and working methodologies of the employee interest representative organs of other countries and, in line with the requirements of solidarity, to make a contribution by itself to the successful efforts of the partner organizations.

The strength of international solidarity enabled SZEF to stress its efforts in March, 1999 at the time of our powerful mass demonstration in front of the Parliament building: ETUC expressed their identifying themselves with the demands of SZEF, whereas the supporting statements in which the leaders of the Federation of the European Trade Unions urged in 1999/2000 the functioning of the interest reconciliation process in Hungary according to the European norms proved to be valuable and brought results including the occasion when Emilio Gabaiglo conducted personal negotiations in Hungary in 2001.