A working day in the Greek private sector can now last up to 13 hours. The Greek parliament approved a controversial labor law on Thursday after two days of debate, report local media. Until now, a working day in Greece was eight hours, with the option of working overtime in exchange for time off.
On October 1 and last Tuesday, Greeks in the private and public sectors struck against that law. Large parts of public life came to a standstill. The strikes have worked for the public sector: the maximum working day will only be longer for employees in the private sector.
Trade union GSEE said in September that it was concerned about “work-life balance” and the health and safety of employees. Trade unions believe that due to travel time, the right to the mandatory daily rest period of 11 hours will not be respected.
Working more than 45 hours per week
According to the new law, an employee must be paid 40 percent more for the additional hours worked, and the longer working day may occur a maximum of 37 days per year. It should also be possible to work 40 hours spread over four days, although according to the conservative Greek Minister of Labor Níki Keraméos, this should only be done voluntarily. Parliament sees longer days as a solution to shortages in, among other things, the tourism sector, an important source of income for Greece.
More hours do not automatically mean more productivity. Although Greek workers according to Eurostat work more than in other countries (almost 21 percent of employees work more than 45 hours per week, in the EU as a whole this is just under 11 percent), labor productivity is more than 40 percent lower than the EU average. The average salary in Greece is one of the lowest in Europe.
Greece’s conservative center-right government has made the labor market more flexible in several ways since 2019: since July last year, employees have been allowed to work six days a week, with 40 percent more pay on the sixth day. The government points out that unemployment has fallen from 18 to 8 percent in six years. However, this downward trend had already started under previous cabinets.
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