Magazine: Everything costs money – even for shops

The government made the right decision when in April they set the same rules that used to be in force before the banning of Sunday trading. It isn’t obligatory for shops to be open on Sundays: estimation is that from 140,000 shops 40,000 are open on the seventh day of the week. At the moment the most important problem to be solved in the retail sector is the lack of workforce. What can be decisive in this is the base salary and not the extra money that retail employees get for Sunday work. The idea of giving them 100 percent higher rates for working on Sundays would entail tens of billion forints of extra cost for the operators of stores trading on Sundays.

What is more, it is a source of tension in retail that there are big wage differences. Some stores would be able to cope with the bigger financial burden, while others wouldn’t. In addition to this, there is a ruling by the Curia of Hungary, which states that it isn’t mandatory to pay extra money for Sunday work in retail units operating in shopping malls. All in all, what shop owners want is high turnover, while customers want stores where prices are low. This is the reason why store managers have to be very cautious about raising prices – e.g. due to increased salary costs – because the competition is fierce in the retail market. Meanwhile both bakers and dairy product manufacturers have announced that they would like to increase prices.