Employment reform is high on the agenda for many governments around the world, with parity and fairness their watchwords. Steps have been taken to equalise the balance of power between employers and employees and to ensure that various categories of worker who have traditionally been denied certain benefits by their circumstances do not continue to lose out.
Terms of employment
The governments and courts in a number of jurisdictions are taking an increasingly employee-friendly stance on issues such as working time and rest periods, to prevent employers from forcing their workers to put in excessive or unreasonable hours. In Hungary, for example, employers used to enjoy a degree of flexibility in determining weekly work schedules, as working hours only had to average out at eight per day and 48 per week over a two-month period in order to meet statutory requirements.
According to Pal Takacs, of Martonyi es Kajtar Baker & McKenzie, this advantage seems to have been scotched by the newly amended Labour Code, which states that no more than 40 hours may be worked each week.
