ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the relationship between broader socioeconomic transformation, privatization and internal restructuring of business organizations. Privatization is considered at the enterprise level, although ownership change cannot be treated separately from those national processes of marketization and economic stabilization that are driven by governmental programmes and policies. Hungary has had its own particular method of privatization, its original philosophy being the selling of state assets to home and foreign investors. The transformation of industrial relations has been burdened by political struggles: conflicts have flared up among the trade union confederations as well as between labour organizations, the government and political parties. Employers and trade unions were concerned about several problems. Disputes over labour rights have occurred in great numbers since 1990 at Hungair. In 1992 one trade union protested against the “excessive transgression” of flying time limits in the case of stewardesses. Collective disputes about wages started as early as 1990–1 but they led to industrial action only in 1993.