Jobbik: Adopt the Wage Union instead of a common European minimum wage!

Press release – Published on Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi’s Facebook account:

When we launched the initiative for the European Wage Union, we made the point that we were not asking for pittance, not begging for donations and we don’t want to get rich on other people’s work.

What we asked for was to provide Hungarian people with the working conditions that enable them to honestly earn European wages. Hungarian workers are just as diligent as German or French ones. The difference is that they are not given the same opportunity. We asked for nothing but an opportunity.

Europe started a discussion on the wage issue. Held in the European Parliament in 2017, our professional conference was attended by acclaimed politicians, economists and experts to discuss what we could do about the problem. European leaders began to talk about such issues as the social pillar and the European labour authority. In the meantime, Fidesz and the left joined forces to launch an astounding smear campaign against the Wage Union in Hungary as well as abroad. Fidesz feared for its power: they are only safe as long as Hungarian workers toil for 12 hours a day and are kept in financial dependency.

The left was again preaching a miracle (old habits die hard) and stated that the Wage Union was infeasible but we shouldn’t worry because they will pull strings abroad to get a common European minimum wage adopted.

Do you know the old joke about the radio news that proved to be completely false in every aspect? Well, it was something like that here, too. First it turned out that the left never meant for Hungary to suddenly adopt Luxembourg’s €2000 minimum wage. Instead, they only meant that each country would eventually adopt “some kind of” minimum wage. Thank you very much for the big nothing. We’ve had the minimum wage for quite a while but people couldn’t make a living on it. Of course, Jobbik is not like the left. We said if it can come to something good, let them do it. And we noted that the European minimum wage is just the zeroth step. Let Europe deal with the wage issue but we need more.

It’s certainly embarrassing for some politicians that an ally of the left, i.e., Social Democrat Commissioner-designate for Jobs Nicolas Schmit flatly stated in his hearing that a common European minimum wage was out of the question and he had no such plans whatsoever.

According to Schmit, the economic differences are just too big for that. In other words: as long as even the HUF 360000 monthly “average wage”, which is half of Luxembourg’s minimum wage, remains nothing but a dream for 70% of Hungarian citizens, what do we want?