The Ombudsman on the MTVA's Public Works Programme

According to the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights, the course of action of the Media Support and Asset Management Fund (MTVA) has infringed upon the principle of the rule of law and the requirement of legal certainty when offering job opportunities to its former employees within the frameworks of a public works programme. The legislation's failure to adequately regulate the legal background of public works constitutes an infringement of fundamental rights, as well.

A petitioner turned to the ombudsman because the MTVA had terminated his employment under collective redundancy citing restructuring, rationalization and eliminating parallel functions as a reason, then hired public workers who would partially fill his former position, too.

The MTVA fired several hundred employees in three waves. In the third wave it terminated the employment of 336 people, then it hired 240 public workers within the frameworks of the Start Labour Reference Programme for digitizing and processing the archives.

The Commissioner established that, although the MTVA had formally complied with legal requirements, the lawfulness of hiring public workers was still questionable. The main objective of public works is to involve disadvantaged people into the system of (public) employment. These programmes were typically launched in the most underprivileged regions in order to provide work opportunities to the most vulnerable persons seeking employment. In contrast, the MTVA launched its public works programme in the capital city, the most privileged settlement on the nation's labour market, and the public workers it hired were not people with low level of education who had been unemployed for a long time but people with at least completed secondary education (most of them with college or university degrees) who had not been that long on the labour market, e.g. those who had been recently fired by the MTVA itself under collective redundancy. Although the relevant statute stipulates increasing the number of employees through hiring public workers, the MTVA had gotten rid of hundreds of its employees before it hired public workers – among those fired there were people whose job description included archiving and processing documents, people who possessed the necessary skills and experience to fill their positions.

In his report Máté Szabó stressed again that the system of public works should not become an alternative to the primary labour market. It may not result either directly or indirectly in the termination of existing positions, and it may not serve the reduction of wages or facilitate setting aside the guarantees related to the right to work.

The Commissioner also pointed out that the financial support for public works had been taken out from the category of budgetary subsidies, therefore, it would not fall anymore under the guarantee rules necessary for transparently regulating public funds.