A long autumn for Tesco

The autumn strike of Tesco workers turned the spotlight on the dramatic transformation of the labour market: the former workforce surplus has turned into a shortage by now. At the moment there are more than 4.4 million active workers in Hungary. With the strike at Tesco the goal wasn’t simply higher salaries, but also less extra work.

More and more workers joined after the strike had started at Tesco. The battle for trained workers who have experience too is becoming fiercer, and the competition is probably only starting: once the trade union and Tesco have signed their agreement, other retailers were announcing their wage increase intentions one after the other. It seems that being closed for a day creates bigger loss for Tesco than increasing salaries.

What kind of effect will this have on consumer prices, now that workers have reached their goal: more people will do the same quantity of work for more money than before? Perhaps this autumn strike and the agreement reached can be viewed as the price of growth that retailers have to pay for their market expansion. //