"Suburban railways HEV has joined the January 12 strike call of Budapest public transport company BKV, strike committee chairman Gabor Nemes announced following talks with the company management.Talks on a collective wage agreement and skeleton services bore no fruit, and will continue.
Meanwhile several BKV bus drivers and technical experts were sacked on Wednesday after a special inspection team set up by company management established that they had impeded putting BKV buses into service, MTI learnt from a trade union source. The source said two bus drivers had been fired from the Kelenfold and Obuda garages in south Pest, while several technical experts were also dismissed from their posts.
Foreign Liga Unions said it found it shocking that BKV had used a 200-strong team to inspect bus drivers. The union said the BKV method evokes the “era of the Inquisition”.
Nemes said they will provide “all the necessary support” to those fired “because BKV fired them unlawfully”. He added that the inspection team had earlier proved technical problems with BKV buses were real and that several buses rejected by the technical experts had in fact been serviceable.
Meanwhile Budapest city council Fidesz-Christian Democrat caucus leader wrote in a letter to Free Democrat deputy mayor Imre Ikvai-Szabo that “if money had not been taken from BKV in wheelbarrows over the past three years on the pretext of consultancy contracts and severance payments, the Ft 2.9 billion required for maintaining the collective wage agreements would have been kept."
Source: Hungary Around the Clock.
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11.01.2010