The role of multi-employer collective agreements in regulating terms and conditions of employment in Hungary

The transition has opened up the space for trade unions to take up a different role and to adopt new strategies of interest representation. Multi-employer collective bargaining was reinstitutionalised in 1989 and this paper analyses the role of multi-employer collective agreements in shaping the new Hungarian industrial relations system and assesses the regulating force of such agreements. The conclusion is reached that multi-employer collective agreements have, in general, not proved to be an effective new mechanism for regulating terms and conditions of employment. After the wave of multi-employer agreements concluded in 1991 and 1992, their coverage decreased substantially. At the present time there appears to be no more than a rather small section of employers and trade unions who have adopted agreements of this type for the - partial - regulation of terms and conditions of employment. The paper argues that not enough frameworks and institutions have been set up to enable collective bargaining and joint regulation to gain real importance, that the unions have to adopt a more assertive role to this end and that there is a need for better organised employers' associations and a more deliberate and efficient role on the part of the state to promote industry-level bargaining to fill the gaps in legal regulation.