On Wednesday, the trial of the six fired teachers of Karinthy Frigyes High School in Budapest continued at the Labor College of the Capital Court with the hearing of witnesses. Brigitta Horváth, Mária Nemes, Dóra Velényi, Judit Ősi, János Rábai and Norbert Pfeiffer were fired by the Külső-Pest Education Center because they repeatedly participated in civil disobedience. School district leader Rábel Krisztina took part in Wednesday’s hearing, and the school’s director and several teachers were also summoned. The dismissed teachers are represented by Tamás Sziklai, the lawyer of TASZ.
The fired teachers are not asking for the restoration of their legal relationship, but they are asking for compensation. According to the legal representative of the teachers, the head of the school district “picked” on Karinthy High School, and the goal of the head of the school district was to lower the school’s standard. The teachers’ legal representative also confirmed this by saying that the school district canceled the school’s bilingual class, and Krisztina Rábel did not react meaningfully to the director’s indication that “there are almost life-threatening conditions” in the school.
Based on these, they believe that these six teachers were fired because they are hard-to-replace workers and they were the face of civil disobedience.
The judge drew attention to the fact that proving this is a very complex process.
Responding to these, Krisztina Rábel said: she does not agree with the teachers’ statements. In the case of dismissals, according to him, the number of hours was the deciding factor, and moreover, the entire XVIII. in the district, the most was spent on the renovation of the Karinthy High School. Indeed, the director indicated that there were life-threatening conditions in the school, this was investigated several times, but the investigations did not support this.
According to the head of the school district, the fired teachers were not irreplaceable, as they were able to find new teachers to replace them.
“It has never happened that more people left than came,” he added. He said that every year he looks at how many classes they can start, it always changes. The judge asked the head of the school district if he had any resentment towards Karinthy, to which he replied: he did not.
The trial began more than a year ago
The trial of the six teachers began in March last year at the Capital District Court. The teachers filed a lawsuit against the school district for the illegal termination of their employment and violation of equal treatment requirements, citing freedom of expression. According to them, their firing was disproportionate and exaggerated, and they don’t even understand why they were fired. According to their point of view, the school district wanted to intimidate the teachers with the dismissals. However, according to the school district, the dismissal of the teachers was not aimed at suppressing their expression of opinion.
Last November, at the trial, Rábel Krisztina, the head of the school district, said: from September 2022, they monitored the teachers involved in civil disobedience, and then sent them a warning letter in October, calling on them to end their action.
Rábel said at the time that the teachers of Karinthy High School participated in civil disobedience “to an outstanding extent”: they missed a total of 440 hours. Finally, those teachers who did not keep at least 20 hours after the warning letter was sent out in October 2022 were excused.
