‘We are always late with everything…’

The article’s title is a quote from the great Hungarian poet Endre Ady and the words he put on paper nearly 100 years ago are still true today. Wages are in close connection with productivity, efficiency, competitiveness and per capita GDP. The free movement of workers shows that as regards salaries, Hungary is lagging behind not only Western Europe, but also the former socialist countries of Central Europe. The food industry is in a difficult situation: the workforce shortage and under-motivated shop assistants have a negative effect on the retail sector.

A salary raise has become absolutely necessary, but who will foot the bill? Multinational retail chains or the Hungarian food industry – in the form of a higher profit margin and from the consumers’ perspective as inflation. It is the responsibility of us, company leaders to do our best to make our businesses more productive, efficient and competitive, because our future and the existence of thousands of families depend on these. I do hope that one day Endre Ady’s painfully beautiful sentence won’t be true for the food industry. //

Endre Fazekas
Managing director
Sió-Eckes