Prologue: My father was driven from the peasant farm to the electrification of the village by the necessity of service. After he was unable to produce the grain, fat and eggs to be delivered from the land he inherited from his parents due to the lack of tools and busy hands, he turned to industry. He used the money he earned there to buy the items that were imposed on him. He was still not happy about the tea, although he was relieved when he was freed from the obligation to submit the land together with the land he had taken. He was paid twice a month. An advance payment in the second week of the month, then the settlement towards the end of the month. Barely, but it covered all the expenses of his family of four. We lived paycheck to paycheck.
My nephew - half a century later - also gets paid twice. It is true that he is not employed by a socialist company, but his employer may have heard something about the former exploitation methods wrapped in a social network. He also gives his workers two salaries, just not like before. Now only one is in an envelope. More precisely, the other one, because the accountant transfers one of them to the bank account of the workers on the given day of the given month. It is so fixed that even the amount is constant. So much so that the workers don't even ask each other. They know exactly to whom and how much they have transferred. This month, HUF 326,000 gross, which is HUF 216,800 in clean money. That of trained workers is less, but it is also an open secret that the net amount is HUF 177,400. In other words, not a single penny more than the officially minimum wage. It is as if the primary intention of those fighting for the lower salary limit was that no employer should pay anyone more than this! It wasn't about that, but about not being able to pay anyone less than that! Despite this, not only the employee lives on the minimum wage, but also his unfortunate employer, the entrepreneur himself. Only as long as he uses his income, which is set to be the most modest, to obtain benefits, he forces his employees to pay a monthly "salary supplement" calculated in an envelope at the time of the agreement. This amount is per person. The workers do not talk about this among themselves. Of course, they secretly hope that theirs is more than the other's, but they can be sure of one thing. If the minimum wage and the guaranteed minimum wage are officially raised, they will certainly earn less. Because as the transfer increases, the supplement decreases. This can be enveloped! In addition, there is also the fact that, overall, the employee is not happy with the central wage settlement, because the surplus of the transfer is definitely worth less than the so-called clean money taken out of the envelope due to the deductions! Well, that's why Hungarian workers don't appreciate the fact that the minimum wage has tripled since 2010.
Epilogue:
The village is preparing for municipal elections. The impartial company manager turned local patriot, who was ostracized because of his mania for order, had been mayor since the dawn of systematization. They raised a lady in pants from the city, who was not suspicious even when she christened the local folk song a rainbow chorus. Then a villager, who was so tired of working for the community, found himself in the chair of the first person, that after his third election he found it difficult to talk to the voters. So even though he wants to stay, the people don't want him! But there is a very good, middle-aged lawyer who would suit both the natives and the immigrants. Her maiden name is known to only a few people. Those who knew that his father had married into the village with the momentum of spontaneous privatization died. He immediately acquired the mill building - since then no one knows where the machines that worked so well in socialism went - and as someone from far away, he was also elected to the municipality after no one trusted his own neighbor. Then he became deputy mayor in no time and almost privatized the cemetery for the plant. His daughters were taught by the village - since the poor person's income was so minimal - in the tailwater of democracy, socially. That's how they got their diploma. One of them is now the right lawyer mentioned above. He will most certainly appear on the ballot as an independent.
Attila Miklós Németh
Cover image: Illustration / Photo: MTI/Imre Faludi
