DISTRESS IN HUNGARY

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28157, 21 December 1956, Page 13

DISTRESS IN HUNGARY

Unions Advocate Dole <Rec. 11.50 p.m.) BUDAPEST. Dec. 20. Hungary s trade unions are urging an unemployment dole to ensure minimum subsistence’’ for workers Many workers are expected to lose their jobs as the countrv’s industrial machine still grinds along in bottom gear with insufficient raw materials, coal and electric power. The Secretary-General of the Hungarian Trade Union Council, Mr Sandor Gaspar, said that the social circumstances of families, their size and their income, must be considered when fixing the amount of dole to unemployed workers. In a statement published in the Hungarian trade union newspaper “Nepaka Rat” yesterday, he also called for more miners and recommended that fewer workers’ wives should go out to work. He suggested that unemployed should be turned over to repairing battle-damage* in Budapest to help meet the pending labour crisis. Meanwhile, an official government announcement said that metallurgical and machine industry plants were working onlv three days a week, because of a shortage of electric power. Last night, large areas of Budapest were completely blacked out for about half an hour bv a power failure. Hungary is officially estimated to have lost nearly one-third of her former mining manpower of 84,000. and output is still lagging between one tenth and one quarter of what it used to be, according to unofficial estimates.