Act on establishing the Office
The Parliament of the Republic of Hungary amended the
Employment Act last year, thereby establishing a new
middle management agency of the Budapest and County
Labour Centres: the Central (or National) Employment
Office and the Public Employment Service. Our Office is
the centre of the Service. This new agency was built on
the basis of the former National Centre for Labour
Research and Methodology (previously known as the
National Labour Centre). The act on the prevention of
unemployment and unemployment provisions was adopted in
1991, after the political changes in Hungary. It was
exactly 10 years ago that regional Labour Centres were
created, supervising nearly 200 local job centres. The
employment service has operated under the supervision
of various ministries over the past decade, depending
on the government structure of the time. Accordingly,
the middle management organisation in charge of
operational management has been transformed several
times. Therefore, a National Labour Centre was
established in 1991, and carried out the traditional
middle management tasks in accordance with the
directives of the controlling ministry. A radical
change occurred in 1996 when the National Labour Centre
was terminated and a great part of its responsibilities
was transferred to the controlling ministry. So what
had been a middle management body transformed into a
research/methodology/IT centre without any substantial
powers. However, it turned out in a few years that the
strategic management required by the Government could
not be combined appropriately in the Ministry with the
operative responsibilities related to the functioning
of the Labour Centres. This is why the need arose to
adopt the above act and to establish the new Office
with appropriate powers. In conjunction with the
Ministry of Economic Affairs, we have already
elaborated the division of powers and responsibilities.
Strategic shift in key objectives
When the employment service was established the key
tasks were to stabilise the organisation and also to
manage unprecedented unemployment levels without
conflicts. However, a lot has changed in the past 10
years: the organisation has grown stronger,
unemployment has declined, and the number of people in
employment has grown perceptibly over the past few
years. The economy has leapt onto a fast growth track,
and a growing number of areas and companies are now
facing a shortage of workforce. We have also found it
increasingly hard to satisfy the growing demand for
workforce with the supply of registered unemployed
people, while motivating the long-term unemployed to
work and making them employable have become testing
tasks in their own right. The organisation has had to
move gradually from distributing benefits, i.e. an
administrative authority task, to using active measures
to help people find their way back to the primary
labour market, as well as to monitoring the efficiency
of using public funds and to tracking the movement of
funds.
In short, the strategy shift meant that our objectives
became to promote employment growth, to make the
unemployed employable, and to shorten the time spent
without a job.
In order to achieve the above objectives, we have had
to increase the role of the Public Employment Service
and its participation in the entire labour market
turnover, making sure that the workforce supply
increasingly meets the requirements of a
knowledge-based society in terms of qualifications. Our
work must be done in such a way as to satisfy not only
domestic demand but also the requirements posed by the
approaching EU accession. We also fulfil our tasks
according to the four pillars set out in the EU’s
annual Employment Policy Guidelines. Of these pillars,
most of the work is required by the pillar called
Employability Improvement. In order to enhance
employment we must handle the unemployed and inactive
population in a special way, since we also need jobs
geared to their skills. Obviously, we also have tasks
related to the implementation of other EU requirements
(pillars), above all supporting entrepreneurs and
ensuring equal opportunities for women.
We aim to expand our client base this year amidst a
declining number of registered unemployed. We put a lot
of emphasis on liaising with companies, identifying new
vacancies, and on placing those already employed in
better jobs. We endeavour to establish cooperation with
the growing number of private placement and recruitment
agencies. We cooperate with NGOs and foundations
established for purposes of promoting employment. These
organisations, by nature, may help the disadvantaged
unemployed to find their way back to the labour market
more effectively and more economically than the public
employment service. This obviously does not mitigate
our responsibility. We keep track of the disadvantaged
people’s fate and the employment service helps
them whenever necessary.
Concerning spending under the Labour Market Fund, the
role of passive measures keeps decreasing year after
year, and this process is accompanied by a consequent
rise in active measures that help people re-enter the
labour market. We intend to reinforce this process and
make the scope of complex labour market programmes
general as opposed to a focus on funding individual
measures.
Taking the EU requirements into account
Based on preliminary discussions, our country is
expected to become a full member of the EU in 2004.
Therefore, we increasingly define our tasks in keeping
with the guidelines around the four pillars approved by
the EU. We are also mindful of the fact the European
Commission highlighted the modernisation of public
employment services in a dedicated communiqué in
1998. We are preparing for the absorption of the
European Social Fund. Since this is only possible after
our accession, we are developing pilot projects under
the Phare programmes in the first place to help these
preparations. Labour market retraining with a practical
focus on employability improvement, and placement in
jobs afterwards will play important roles in the
actions planned under the projects. These projects are
being implemented in the 2001-2003 timeframe in three
regions of the country, including Northern Hungary, the
Northern Plain and the Southern Plain. The competent
Labour Centres are involved in the implementation
process. The role of the Central Employment Office is
to implement coordination and to disseminate good
practice.
CV: Róbert Komáromi, Director
General
Structure of Organisation |