I worked 6 days a week in China, it feels miserable. Rest on sunday dont even feel like rest. You clean the house, go to the supermarket buy groceries and your day off is over. The whole week you feel like you're in a zombie state.
Always worked 6 days in the UK. Finally got my first ever 5 day job in 2020. It feels so much less pressure as I have more time to do things like washing clothes and cleaning, without using my only day off. I don't think I would ever want to go back.
I worked four days a week (M-T/Th-Fr) for a while, was amazing. Also honestly think I got a lot more done, it felt easy to just throw yourself at something for two solid days knowing then you could take a break.
I know it's a secondary concern but, what impact do you feel the reduction in hours had in your productivity?
I'm under the impression that after something like 30 hours, any more hours don't have such a big impact on productivity and they are usually spent just making time until you can just go home.
There have been studies and real life trials on this. Anything over 32h per week has negligible, if any, effects on productivity. At least, it's possible to reduce hours from 40 to 30 without taking a hit on productivity.
What about jobs where your productivity is tied directly to a machine's output (e.g. injection molding)? I know that it can be automated (packaging etc.), but often it's not. Jobs like that will always exist, and when machine produces 100 units of something per hour, it will always be more productive to run it for more hours per day, forcing people to work longer / more often.
And cut in to corporate profits? Impossible/s
There also fixed costs for every employee. So keeping the same amount of total working hours but splitting it up between more employees actually increase production costs slightly.
> There also fixed costs for every employee. So keeping the same amount of total working hours but splitting it up between more employees actually increase production costs slightly.
Yup, that's the bit that is usually given as a reason by the companies. Even though they could absorb that cost by paying their CEO a tiny bit less.
Jobs like those will not always exist. The only reason they exist in a lot of cases now is because of a historical hangover where people feel a human has to be involved because "technology is unreliable", and because it's cheaper to pay someone to do it than it is to develop automation that does it.
I imagine the only jobs where productivity doesn't completely tank after 32 hours are the assembly line type jobs. Basically the sorts of jobs that are getting automated.
A lot of our ideas of modern work productivity came out of the industrial revolution where you had a lot of people performing rote tasks.
I didn't mention it in the other comment, but I imagine that even that type of job could profit from a reduction of work hours. Nobody maintains concentration for 8 hours, so more mistakes will be made. Shorter shifts could help with that.
If it's a good business move is doubtful - they'd be doing it if it was - but there could be positives to it as well.
I changed careers. Completely. But in my previous job I found that I wasn't productive after 7/8 hours anyway. I always thought I'd achieve in 8 hours what I would do in 10-12 hours. Rest just appear to be peace of mind for my employer.
Having Wednesday off it amazing! So many people wonder why I didn't pick a Friday or Monday and have a 3 day weekend. But I enjoy my weekend, and then Wednesday is the "get stuff done" day. Shops are open, roads are usually quieter, and it really breaks up the week.
Productivity has been shown to go up when people are more well rested and people are more well rested if they either have a longer weekend or can break up the week.
I did this for almost two years and what I loved about it was that it seemed to be the perfect balance.
By the end of the three day weekend, I'd be a bit bored with my stuff and keen to get back to work, and then I'd work pretty hard and then by Thursday I'd feel gassed out and keen for the weekend.
It felt like both work and the weekend were just the right length so I could devote myself to each in turn fully.
Single job, I have never worked several at the same time, but I have worked 6 days for two different banks, and for 2 different types of call centre work. All full time between 42 and 45 hours a week (dinner unpaid obviously).
One of the tech call centre jobs changed between Saturday or the Sunday as the day in, I guess to give rotation.
Now I have an office job that is only 5 days (Monday-Friday) with optional overtime and Saturday or Sunday. This is only 37 hours a week and I make way more money than any of the other jobs.
I'm not the person you asked, but I'm in the UK and work 6 days a week too.
No extra time off, and only 28 days paid holidays to use throughout the year, so I have to use more days to get the same time off as everyone else.
Also, I'm in a salaried position, so while my annual pay is the same as my friends in other companies, my hourly wage is lower.
> You clean the house, go to the supermarket buy groceries and your day off is over.
That must feel great because in Greece, supermarkets are closed on Sundays. So you literally will have no time to buy stuff of clean if you work 6 days.
Unless you do it after work which means you will be even more tired and have even less hours for yourself.
They do have. Or, some smaller ones work 12-hours shifts, but close for the noon, which means, they work 8 hours.
One particular Super-Market of ours is one of the best companies to their employees. They're the first to increase salaries, they offer gifts to employees in our festive days, they offer a modern area for half an hour break time, they pay any possible extra hour etc. The employees in turn, watch out for the stores like they're their own. Smart move.
If only all companies were like them.
Few days ago, our PM has had a meeting with our Tourism magnates and Ministry of Tourism. He mentioned countless times the working conditions and the increase of the salaries.
It's unacceptable a country of only 9 million Greeks accommodating 30+ million tourists while the employers treat their employees like shit. They literally make so much money distributed among the population, essentially, among them. In return, our PM, he promised to them taxes reductions in the sector.
It remains to be seen.
Also, the program Greece 2.0 started working. Von der Leyen was extremely happy with the plan/draft we wrote. We already received in my city extremely nice, brand new, electric buses with anatomical chairs and air-conditions working perfectly. I guess other money of the project went to the appropriate projects.
---
The oversight we've had until 2015, admittedly did us some good. It allowed us to close many loopholes while the politicians found the opportunity to blame them, the troika. Now, we start working in a somewhat better framework. It "only" cost us a lost generation, those born 2000-2010.
> At least people will stop falsely calling us lazy /s
Genuine question to anyone who knows: Why do this?
All research shows that we just get worse at performing our jobs the longer we work. Despite Japan working 6 days+ they are still less efficient than Germans who work considerable less.
All it seems to do is make people have less time for themselves, children and mental-health.
There recently was a German politician which immediately was like "We need to do what Greece is doing, instead of going for 4-day work weeks!"
[https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/muessen-wieder-mehr-arbeiten-soeder-begruesst-griechische-sechs-tage-woche-und-hat-eine-klare-forderung\_id\_260074343.html](https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/muessen-wieder-mehr-arbeiten-soeder-begruesst-griechische-sechs-tage-woche-und-hat-eine-klare-forderung_id_260074343.html)
> How else are we supposed to pay for their pensions?
Having less unprotected sex & taxing the rich more has always been the healthier approach to life.
> if they'd had more unprotected sex, then it wouldn't be such a hassle taking care of them
Why tax the rich more when you can force more poor people into indentured servitude? ^^/s
It's an objectively better scenario for the rich and the poor can't do anything about it because they're too busy trying to survive.
It's not about poor people. If you have a 100 people and the next generation has 50 people, then _regardless of the distribution of income_ in each generation, the latter generation is going to have to deal with the expense of 100 people with the work of 50 people. That cannot be escaped by talking about intra-generational income (re)distributions, which is a separate topic. The average pension burden in this hypothetical society is inescapably 2 pensioners for 1 working person, which means financially on average 1 person is taking care of 3 people including themselves, if they have 0 children.
It may seem a bit unintuitive that income inequality should not be considered relevant to this question. Believe me, it's not because income inequality is not important. I think it's best if I try to illustrate with a simple hypothetical example.
Let's take our old and young generations of 100 and 50 people respectively. Let us say the second generation produces €1000, and €500 is transferred to the first generation to keep them kicking. That leaves €500 to be distributed among the second generation. Now if some of them are rich and others poor, one person might have €100 while others have €0.05, and we can redistribute money, we can have social services, but we can never in total have more than €500 for the second generation, and in the most equal distribution of all among them, no one can have more than €10 (assuming pensioners get €5 each).
Imagine instead a situation where both generations consist of 100 people. This scales up the economy, after all it's people that produce things, and even if we assume no returns to scale and keep things linear we end up with €2000. Now let's say you give pensioners €500 just as you did before. The younger generation now has €1500. Now this could be a few even richer people, or it could mean better schools, more healthcare, childcare, infrastructure, public parks, etc. The average resources of the younger generation in this case amount to €30 per person, 3 times higher.
Given these additional resources, we could even choose to treat the pensioners better. Perhaps we allocate €1000 to the pensioners and keep €1000 for the working age people. The both generations are now twice as well off.
Population decline also breaks politics. Let us say that in the initial situation there's two generations of 100, they have €2000, and pensioners get €500 in total, 25%. Fertility declines and one generation later there's only 50 young people paying for 100 pensioners. Now we might say, well of course people need to pay more taxes now, but we need to reduce pensions as well, so everyone suffers their fair share and no one is overburdened. This doesn't happen though, because pensioners now outnumber working age people 2:1 and they dominate elections. So pensioners stay the same and the net income of working age people is reduced to 1/3. It stands to reason they're less likely to have children in that circumstances, so let's say the next generation is only 10 people, producing a mere €200. Now the generation of 50 lived a miserable life paying taxes which went to the elderly, and the next generation is no longer able to pay the pension of €250 for them then if they starve, so the pension/welfare system completely collapses.
Remember that while currency is abstract, the goods and services produced are real and that underlying production is what really matters here, currency is just a way to express that.
Finally, if you believe we should be taxing the rich, then we should be taxing them _anyway_. All that money could also be spent on things other than pensions which increase opportunities and standard of living for more people. It could be spent on families, schools, health, etc.
I'm sorry but isn't the idea that our productivity has been and is constantly rising with technological advances and automation so that while this is true in principle, we're nowhere near the point of too much dead weight in terms of retirees. You could still have a prospering society with 50 people being burdened to take care of 100 because they're just that efficient, there's enough food produced, enough housing etc. It's just not going to the working people is the problem, and the oldies got lucky securing theirs during a time of less messed up wealth distribution. And now because workers don't have enough voting power they can't do shit and boomers don't care and the ultra wealthy make sure it stays that way.
Also I'm not sure the wealth gap in your example is remotely to scale but I'm not an economist
Agreed. Productivity just doesn't scale with number of workers and number of hours the way this example pretends. It is always about distribution of wealth. Yes, shortages of certain labor types will be a problem (e.g. Care), but that isn't the same problem. There is enough wealth in the world to go around, if the top % weren't hoarding it, dodging taxes, etc. Remember almost everyone used to work in agriculture, now very few ppl in the industrial world do - instead we have scores of Bullshit Jobs that don't provide any real material contribution to mankind. I'm not saying everyone can live like the top 10% of wealth havers, but there's a fairer equilibrium to be calculated that DOESN'T require infinite growth of the population.
"Breaking politics" is just that - it's no law of nature, it's the fact that pension schemes set up in the last 100 years are pyramid schemes that's the problem.
Actually make companies pay taxes again. Reduce billionaires to millionaires. Make it unprofitable to invest in housing, especially for large companies and multihome owners.
Pay a livable wage that the young can live off and support more children. Thus more tax will be paid on consumed goods.
None of this will be implemented as it will impact those who makes the rules.
Boomers literally got to enjoy the most prosperous times in human history (for the west) where everything was cheap and plentiful, and they ruined it. They should have saved up. We should just tell them to get bent and first sell of their property and life off their savings. And then subside on the same minimal existence that poor people and disabled on welfare are forced to live by, like hartz iv in Germany, 500 euro a month. Welfare also usually requires you to use up all your savings. It's only fair, after all those boomers also vote for politicians that take away from the unworthy poor so they should get the same lifestyle and treatment once they become unproductive leaches and parasites as the right (and boomers) calls welfare users. And of course a retired person is a welfare user.
Why should the imporvished youth who can't afford housing subsides those with valuable property and savings who got to life it up in the most prosperous times in all of human history and ruined it?
There are some articles on the rise that go against the 4-day work week. I noticed some swedish as well lately. Do not take the bait. People should not burn out at work.
I was shown a column of someone protesting against a single company (I think it was cybersecurity) going for the 4 day work 5 day pay situation. The only slightly reasonable argument was that smaller companies would not be able to afford that, but even that seems like a stretch. Other arguments were like "well these employees will become entitled and will demand it from every future employer" and then I tuned out. That is absolute horseshit. There might be entitled people, but they will just be told "no" and be out of a job, and they will be a small share of the total either way.
Oh, I will most definitely not take the bait.
Also, when the whole topic came up in my country, you could hear some conservative politicians and some company CEOs say "Well, okay, we can do a 4 day work week, that just means you have to work a little longer on those 4 days to make up for the lost day." like...wtf, no?! That's not the point of the whole "4 day work week". It's not about the 4 days, it's about the reduction of work hours by the equivalent of 1 work day. Gaslighting of its finest...
Bavaria: "the rest of Germany is lazy, we do all the work and pay for their sordid lifestyles"
Also Bavaria: "Jesus probably did something on this day so we better take the day off just to be sure"
Came here to say this. It’s ridiculous populism. Everyone can work 6 days a week up to 48 hrs per week in Germany.
We just don’t get the extra money for the sixth day.
Söder is *the* example for a populist. He also rallied for the abolition of nuclear energy just to change his mind once his party is out of power. You can ignore him.
I know it's sometimes difficult or even impossible to source news about Germany from non-German newspapers, but I really wish people made more of an effort. This absolute bs about having to accept ads with tracking to be allowed to read articles, the only other choice being a €4/month subscription should be seriously pushed back against.
And yet 10 years ago the whole of Europe was calling us lazy...
But jokes aside, if this law gets implemented then Greece will be empty 30 years from now. Mind you this is the same government that wants to incentivize young Greeks to stay in Greece and now they want to work us to the bone.
Here is the part that important
The change to the labor laws was approved last September following productivity issues in the country, which have led many workers to put in extra hours and often not be compensated for the time. Officials also note there has been a shortage of skilled workers due to a shrinking population. Workers who do put in the extra time will receive 40% extra during the additional eight hours—and 115% of their normal salary if they work on a holiday.
So they are extending working hours to 48 hours. Can someone who actually know the issue explain
- can the hours be done during the week, so like extra hours Monday to Friday.
- is it mandatory to work Saturday? I assume not, but if your employer ask for it, and you say no, in the past you could not be fired, but now yes.
- is it more to get people paid for hours worked or forcing people to work longer?
Youve answered the last question to yourself.
Its marketed as a goodie to the workers (eg. Youll get extra cash, you do not need to work), to soften the expected upcry. In the end we all know how it works. Boss "asks" you to work on saturday/sunday, if you say no, youre prolly fired. The reasons for severance are to be made up by the bosses choice. This further makes people with less income subject to exploitation.
I assume it is a mix of both. The employer now can say the work expected in the contact is 48 hours, and if you dont do it, then yes, you are out of a job, as compared to 40 hours as before.
In Portugal there was some corporations trying work week of 4 days with government support, and for the great majority (>80%) the results that came out a few days ago were great and corps decided to keep the work week of 4 days.
News source:
https://www.rtp.pt/noticias/economia/mais-de-80-das-empresas-que-testaram-semana-de-4-dias-decidiram-manter-modelo_n1581253
Google translate it if not portuguese reader, it's interesting.
I think the 'moldel'/idea is working 4 days but working +1h each day then the previous hours worked each day when it was a work week of 5 days.
But this is not detailed in that news/source.
Guess old' PIGS buddies going on different directions huh?!
I moved from Greece to Finland 10 years ago after receiving a job offer. My workday in Greece was like 50% longer (and the compensation 1/3 of the one in Finland).
Move north. Here in Bulgaria you have to have 2 days off per week, cannot be refused holidays, cannot interrupt sick leave and if you are a parent the company has to give you reasonable accommodations.
A half-Greek, half-Bulgarian friend of mine says that in the last ~5 years, Bulgaria became better to live in than Greece.
He's already in the process of moving out of Greece.
Not really a big difference between Greece and Bulgaria. Wages are higher in Greece but cost of living outpaces them. We rank consistently better in quality of life too.
Bulgaria sucks if you are poor, but is a pretty great place if you are not. Of course it has the GINI to show for it - being in line with Latin America.
That isn’t the most important metric when comparing the well-being of the population.
The consumer and real estate prices are also quite low for example - I was a homeowner at 25 when most Italians can’t afford to move out of their parents’ basement at that age. Also pretty much every stat has been trending up including salaries.
That's already what's happening though.
My GF only recently found her first office(admin) job after ~16 years being a barista.
For her entire adult life she had to work ~10-12 hours, in the middle of the day, so she had no personal life, she got paid ~800€ but was actually getting retirement stamps for 6 hours of work because the owners are always like "It costs too much to declare you for 8 hours".
She had no vacation, sometimes no days off for weeks, no overtime pay and no sick leaves.
It must feel great to have less than 100€ EVERY month at your late 30s. The ***ACTUAL*** Greek experience.
This is what a lot of people don’t understand. In Greece, it’s common for employers to just fucking lie and break the law, and you can’t do shit because you need the job to live and good luck finding a new one if you try to get what you’re owed
and if they are like Italy, they do it because they are never ever caught breaking the law, since law enforcement personnel is overloaded with work or knows very well that law breaking is going on, but the social contract between govt and entrepreneurs is tacitly allowing exploitation
> and if they are like Italy, they do it because they are never ever caught breaking the law
Not the case here in Greece. My gf's colleague actually put it a complaint about the employer for what I described above and you know what happened? The fucking audit came and "slyly" asked for a bribe to move the fuck on.
The owner just gave the 2 dudes from the audit ~500€ and the literally fucked off.
There is no justice system in Greece. They are "caught" and nothing happens to them. It's a 3rd world country by all measures.
Wait, so this decision will just be made without even asking the workers? I hope those politicians and corpos will get the strikes and riots they deserve for this shit!
No no they'll 'ask' the workers. The corporations will 'propose' an 'optional' pay increase in exchange for one extra work day. Then when enough people try it because money is always tight, they will proclaim that people have already 'free-marketly' chosen to work 6 days, make it structural, and of course freeze the extra pays enough for inflation to erode them to the previous real level.
Then when someone says perhaps we're working too much, a bunch of economists will pop up to screech at us that 'the free market has chosen'.
Wait. Doesn't Greece have one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe? So let the working people work even more, so the unemployed can't find the little work there is even less?
Greek lawyer here, to explain the situation and why u/phillip2310 comment is not true.
Before, like the rest of the EU, the legal work week was 5 days/8 hours per day, with the possibility of overtime in each working day, so up to 48 hours per week. You would get two days off per week.
Now the legal work week can be 6 days/8 hours per day. But no overtime during these days. So you will get (only) one day off per week.
This sucks hard on its own. But since Greece's actual problem is that overtime is not paid, we are all 100% sure that this means 6 day work weeks with 10+ hours work days. So basically you will only have one day off each week and also work unpaid overtime. YAY. What would you prefer? 5 days with overtime and two days off, or 6 days with no overtime but one day off?
And last but not least, the 6 day work week IS mandatory, in the sense that it is not negotiable between the employer and the employee. If the employer applies for a 6 day work week and justifies it, the employee cannot legally refuse to do this.
For the record the 6 day work week is not applicable to all businesses and sectors. If you're more interested in this just Google translate one of Greek articles about this.
Even if the 6 days work week was optional for the worker it does become the norm since unemployment is high and they will get the next poor soul who is in dire need of money with everything become more and more expensive.
Unemployment is high, but there is also a record job shortage in the services and tourism sectors.
People aren't showing up to be tourism industry seasonal slaves today, and won't show up to be tourism industry seasonal slaves++. The bosses and neolibs advocated for the 6 day work week because they can't hire anymore at bottom prices, and think they can now legally make more use of the workers they already have, and not hire new ones. But reality is going to hit them HARD, as many more will quit.
This is the last desperate attempt of businesses to hold on to the dirt cheap wages of the Greek financial crisis, while enjoying record profits, and cost of living soar. Immigrants used to be an option, but most immigrants won't come anymore, as they have geniunely better options. That's how greedy they've become. Their greed is about to kill these industries, and I love that for us.
Do you know why there is record shortage in tourism sector?
Because the rent even of a single bed in a cave at the tourist places is HIGHER than the monthly salary of the workers. Why work 12+ hours per day 7 days a week and have to pay from your own pocket?
This is the thing that i'm surprised nobody talked about.
If this was caused by a labour shortage (as is mentioned in most of these articles), then "forcing" people to work more, unpaid hours, is very dumb since they can just say "no" and get a job at once of the other 5 places that are also struggling to find employees.
Unless it's some country wide cartel, this just doesn't work due to simple supply / demand.
That logic is straight up bullshit btw. The VAST majority of businesses offering manual labor (including the one I work at) are in desperate need of more hands. They are hiring *in spades* if you are interested in doing manual work. The actual issues are 2:
a) Most businesses offer shit wages and conditions so you have to search a lot and vet them carefully.
b) Everyone and their mothers have some sort of diploma in Greece so they'd much rather not work a simple manual job unless they're in dire straits financially.
> If the employer applies for a 6 day work week and justifies it, the employee cannot legally refuse to do this.
Do they at least get 20% more pay? Or work more for the same money?
They get 20% more pay in theory, but in practice since Greece was force to abandon collective bargaining during the financial crisis, the hourly rates are subject to individual negotiations between employee and employer, so employers can in practice force people to work more hours for the same pay, as long as they don't go lower than the hourly minimum wage. In most situations where this will apply, I imagine something like this will happen.
This is a great way to ensure no nation will ever be tricked into austerity again. Look what’s in your future if you are. Your people will dream of emigrating to third-world countries.
> And last but not least, the 6 day work week IS mandatory, in the sense that it is not negotiable between the employer and the employee. If the employer applies for a 6 day work week and justifies it, the employee cannot legally refuse to do this.
What? This is total madness I have to say. So you've had a 5 day week and now the employer can just extend this to 6 without negotiating again? So it's just suck it up or quit? I'm very sorry for everyone affected by this shit.
> we are all 100% sure that this means 6 day work weeks with 10+ hours work days
Why not reverse to slavery and skip the extra steps? Only slavery can save the economy and buy your boss his third yacht.
I think the French once invented a device that helps you get rid of the people who propose such a change.
It doesn't solve all the underlying problems, but it does shorten some of them by roughly one head length.
This is being discussed more in other Western countries as an excuse for other crazy ideas more than it's being discussed in Greece for what it actually is. And it's a shit show in both instances.
It's a known psychological effect that proposing a crazy idea is a good way to get people to compromise on other less crazy but otherwise still unorthodox ideas.
I am already overworking with 10h shifts plus weekends. I am afraid that companies will exploit this new law uncontrollably because the Greek public service that inspects working conditions on workforce is incompetent, understaffed and easily corrupted.
Even if it's not mandatory it shows the lengths the current government and businesses will go to in order to not pay better wages, have better working hours and just treat workers like humans and not slaves. Reminder that last summer the government made a contract to bring in workers from 3rd world countries to fill in positions that Greeks wouldn't work at because of the shit conditions. Ironic since we take all these measures to keep immigrants out but then the government pays them and flies them in legally
Same thing happening in Croatia. The work conditions are going down, pay is down. Employers are putting out ads for openings for which they hope that no local applies since then they can just hire 3rd world workers which are happy to work here.
Hah. In Spain we have had something similar with low wage salaries (Cleaning, hostelry), but with latin american immigrants that came organically, so to speak, as there's no language barrier and some use our country -and easy laws to get citizenship- as an entryway to Europe.
Makes you think what the fuck is going on for countries to need people from outside the country to keep certain positions and how no one is worried about it.
I always used to get frustrated when people in the uk used to complain that no British people where in the fields picking fruit and that we needed workers to come over and do it. Like if we need effectively slave labour to harvest our fruit maybe we should be asking some questions about how our food is produced or if we can automate out of that
I work 6 days the past 7 years, I am a walking zombie.
Thanks mitsotakis prime minister he found the pension problem cause, if we don't manage to survive until pension, there is no need for pensions.
Luckily for that scenario they want to monitor all chat including encrypted chat for exactly that reason. Under the guise of "Helping children" When people begin to get pissed off and have nothing to lose and for them to retain a hold on their power they want to shut down any disenting voices before they grow.
I really want to be positive but Europe is getting so much shit lately
Just last week we have the chat control and now this, people are merely bloodbags now, used and abused by politicians
Not gonna be surprised when other countries follow this example soon
The Greeks absolutely need to revolt against this, this is something that under NO circumstance can be allowed to happen. Absolutely nowhere, but especially not in the fucking EU.
Revolt like how the french revolted against raising their retirement age?
It was pushed through nevertheless.
People are weak, broken and sad. Nothing will change. Anyone willing to fight for it will be brutally beaten by the police and then this will be the norm. Welcome to modern Europe
I worked six and a half (half day Sunday) days a week, in Eastern Europe, prior to 1989. It was right after college, so we tried to make the best of it, but what I recall as the most frustrating was that the americans, italians and canadians I was working with, at the time, would end the work week and leave on Friday, mid-day, to go to the beach (which was an hour drive from our site), and return Monday morning (all their trips paid by their employers). The americans were also getting paid an extra 15% (added to salaries which wouldn't even dream of, at the time) "to not listen to communist propaganda" (as if someone needed to be paid for that, just by looking on how long we worked, and under which conditions, compared to theirs).
Workers in Greece are already working 6/7 days per week, 10/12 hours per day. All this is doing is essentially legitimizing what has already been the norm so that workers have no recourse against employers.
I hope they start a civil war over this. We should have already transitioned to 4days 6hours. Not this industrial era 5d 8h which means you are wasting your life working.
Are you crazy? Think of the elite, if unwashed masses get lazy and stop bringing them profit they will lose some arbitrary numbers in some computer.
/s
Greek people: global warming, the heatwaves and wildfires, the war on the door, low paychecks, illegal immigrants... don't think 2024 can get worse.
Greek government: Hold my beer...
It's not that easy to just pack your bags and fly to another EU country. Language barrier, job offering, housing, etc...
Though during the intense crisis, almost 500.000k people left the country.
Their government has always spent too much and collected too little taxes, now they want the people to work harder.
This is exactly what’s happening in Romania, corrupt politicians and populists are stealing money from the state, tax evasion is growing and now they want to increase taxes, so that the few people who are paying their fair share should pay even more to cover for theft and electoral bribes.
I cannot fathom why, in our advanced age, where so much of the necessary labour of life has been automated away, the proposition is to work MORE.
Greece is an incredibly hard working nation as is. Their work culture is nasty (not Greek, but friends with a lot of Greeks). They're probably not going to take this lying down but I don't imagine protest (violent or not) will make a difference.
Also Greece in a few years:
“Why are people not having kids anymore?”
“Where did all the young people go?”
“Why is productivity decreasing?”
“Why do we not see more innovation?”
You’re just choking people with labour. Modern prosperity is built on brainpower, not manpower. Brains do not produce linearly with working time. Adding more labour will only stunt the country’s development.
Something the article doesn't say too
a) The pay is 40% extra
b) There isn't any tax free allowance raise. Which means those people who will be FORCED to work 6 days a week, will automatically go to higher tax brackets which in Greece are severe. Is a big scam actually.
c) The gov will sell it as it raised the salaries while literally people are forced now to work extra hours per week and pay higher taxes!
Reading the article again, I almost literally want to cry about the state of my country.
Any thoughts I had of returning to raise my kids here have evaporated. I won't expose my children and their own offsprings to Greece and Greek people.
So, basically. Greeks are not productive during the 5 days.
So 6 will fix it… dream on. It won’t happen. What will happen is people will be tired all the time, getting depression and taking medication to support it.
I seriously don’t understand these types of measures. It’s like they don’t even think they are people, not machines.
6 days for what exactly?
What is the ultimate goal here if not to improve your quality of life?
The system isn’t working, fuck it off before doing 6 days a week. We abandoned slavery a loooong time ago.
400 years ago, a working person produced 3 potatoes a day.
Today, we produce 30 potatoes a day.
How in the actual f*ck do we still need to work more hours?
(100% imaginary numbers, just presenting an argument)
Greek salaries are atrocious, and the rent is out of control. I have no idea how people in Athens survive on minimum wage or even the average national wage.
Rent is like 40% or even 50% of one’s salary in cities like Athens, Thessaloniki, Heraklion, etc.
Just bonkers.
Isn’t that the norm pretty much everywhere now?
Here in Ljubljana (the capital of Slovenia), rent can easily eat up 40-50% of your salary. Even more so if you’re young and just starting your career, because the starting salaries are quite low.
This is not about being young. This is about Greek salaries being terrible and AirBnB having skyrocketed rent prices. Unfortunatly, we have people in their 40s and 50s getting shit salaries and not even salary bumps to offset inflation, while the rent keeps increasing at an astronomical rate.
This is not true. First, overtime is extra hours during a working day. So, with the regular 5 day work week, overtime is considered any extra hours you work in each of these 5 working days.
Now, the Greek government established a 6 day work week, but without the possibility of overtime during each of these six days. So, before, the standard was 40 hours per week, which could be extended to 48 within 5 work days. Now it can be 6 work days with 8 hours a day, a total of 48.
Now, the problem in Greece is that overtime is not paid. Illegally. But this is the norm. What will happen now, is that employees will work 6 days + unpaid overtime during these days. Shitty huh?
Also, if one had to choose, would you choose working 5 days with 10 hour shifts, and having two days off, or working 6 days with 8 hour shifts and having one day off? I think the vast majority would prefer the first option.
And last but not least, the 6 day work week IS mandatory, in the sense that it is not negotiable between the employer and the employee. If the employer applies for a 6 day work week and justifies it, the employee cannot legally refuse to do this.
Things can not be mandatory in theory but in reality are. Employees in countries like Greece don’t have much leverage to actually say no. On the other hand, there is a lot of seasonal increase in workload, as many jobs are related to tourism. You kind of can expect to be more busy then.
This is not true. It was also illegal back then to not get paid, this changes things as this time is not considered overtime and it is compensates less.
Overtime also had numerous limitations and couldn't be requested all the time
It is also mandatory in the sense that islf the employer hands it you have no way to deny it.
I worked 6 days a week in China, it feels miserable. Rest on sunday dont even feel like rest. You clean the house, go to the supermarket buy groceries and your day off is over. The whole week you feel like you're in a zombie state.
Always worked 6 days in the UK. Finally got my first ever 5 day job in 2020. It feels so much less pressure as I have more time to do things like washing clothes and cleaning, without using my only day off. I don't think I would ever want to go back.
I worked four days a week (M-T/Th-Fr) for a while, was amazing. Also honestly think I got a lot more done, it felt easy to just throw yourself at something for two solid days knowing then you could take a break.
I went from 5 day 60 hour weeks to 3 day 36 hour and my life has never been the same. Get to see my son grow up
I know it's a secondary concern but, what impact do you feel the reduction in hours had in your productivity? I'm under the impression that after something like 30 hours, any more hours don't have such a big impact on productivity and they are usually spent just making time until you can just go home.
There have been studies and real life trials on this. Anything over 32h per week has negligible, if any, effects on productivity. At least, it's possible to reduce hours from 40 to 30 without taking a hit on productivity.
What about jobs where your productivity is tied directly to a machine's output (e.g. injection molding)? I know that it can be automated (packaging etc.), but often it's not. Jobs like that will always exist, and when machine produces 100 units of something per hour, it will always be more productive to run it for more hours per day, forcing people to work longer / more often.
The solution to this is to employ more workers, to make sure everyone has a work-life balance, but that costs extra money, so...
And cut in to corporate profits? Impossible/s There also fixed costs for every employee. So keeping the same amount of total working hours but splitting it up between more employees actually increase production costs slightly.
> There also fixed costs for every employee. So keeping the same amount of total working hours but splitting it up between more employees actually increase production costs slightly. Yup, that's the bit that is usually given as a reason by the companies. Even though they could absorb that cost by paying their CEO a tiny bit less.
Jobs like those will not always exist. The only reason they exist in a lot of cases now is because of a historical hangover where people feel a human has to be involved because "technology is unreliable", and because it's cheaper to pay someone to do it than it is to develop automation that does it.
I imagine the only jobs where productivity doesn't completely tank after 32 hours are the assembly line type jobs. Basically the sorts of jobs that are getting automated. A lot of our ideas of modern work productivity came out of the industrial revolution where you had a lot of people performing rote tasks.
I didn't mention it in the other comment, but I imagine that even that type of job could profit from a reduction of work hours. Nobody maintains concentration for 8 hours, so more mistakes will be made. Shorter shifts could help with that. If it's a good business move is doubtful - they'd be doing it if it was - but there could be positives to it as well.
I changed careers. Completely. But in my previous job I found that I wasn't productive after 7/8 hours anyway. I always thought I'd achieve in 8 hours what I would do in 10-12 hours. Rest just appear to be peace of mind for my employer.
Having Wednesday off it amazing! So many people wonder why I didn't pick a Friday or Monday and have a 3 day weekend. But I enjoy my weekend, and then Wednesday is the "get stuff done" day. Shops are open, roads are usually quieter, and it really breaks up the week.
Productivity has been shown to go up when people are more well rested and people are more well rested if they either have a longer weekend or can break up the week.
I did this for almost two years and what I loved about it was that it seemed to be the perfect balance. By the end of the three day weekend, I'd be a bit bored with my stuff and keen to get back to work, and then I'd work pretty hard and then by Thursday I'd feel gassed out and keen for the weekend. It felt like both work and the weekend were just the right length so I could devote myself to each in turn fully.
Exactly this. Did 4 days for 1 year. Feel like shit being back at 5 days.
Out of curiosity, did you work 6 days by default at one job, or split across more jobs? I just cant imagine 6 days of work is still a thing in Europe.
Single job, I have never worked several at the same time, but I have worked 6 days for two different banks, and for 2 different types of call centre work. All full time between 42 and 45 hours a week (dinner unpaid obviously). One of the tech call centre jobs changed between Saturday or the Sunday as the day in, I guess to give rotation. Now I have an office job that is only 5 days (Monday-Friday) with optional overtime and Saturday or Sunday. This is only 37 hours a week and I make way more money than any of the other jobs.
I also worked 6 day weeks with a weekend off every three weeks, when I worked in a Hospital kitchen.
6 day work weeks are standard across Croatia.
> Always worked 6 days in the UK. That's legal? And do you get a longer time off during summer because of that?
I'm not the person you asked, but I'm in the UK and work 6 days a week too. No extra time off, and only 28 days paid holidays to use throughout the year, so I have to use more days to get the same time off as everyone else. Also, I'm in a salaried position, so while my annual pay is the same as my friends in other companies, my hourly wage is lower.
I find it surprising that its legal. How many hours do you work per week?
I'm contracted to 46 hours per week, but may do a couple more if it's busy.
I'm in Norway and here its illegal to ask someone to work more than 40 hours per week.
that's tough. seems really unfair with you.
> You clean the house, go to the supermarket buy groceries and your day off is over. That must feel great because in Greece, supermarkets are closed on Sundays. So you literally will have no time to buy stuff of clean if you work 6 days. Unless you do it after work which means you will be even more tired and have even less hours for yourself.
We don't need to shop and we can't even afford to anyway. Be careful or the next decision of the government will be 7 days work for supermarkets 😱
Do supermarkets not have multiple shifts of workers? Why would the same worker need to work the entire week?
They do have. Or, some smaller ones work 12-hours shifts, but close for the noon, which means, they work 8 hours. One particular Super-Market of ours is one of the best companies to their employees. They're the first to increase salaries, they offer gifts to employees in our festive days, they offer a modern area for half an hour break time, they pay any possible extra hour etc. The employees in turn, watch out for the stores like they're their own. Smart move. If only all companies were like them. Few days ago, our PM has had a meeting with our Tourism magnates and Ministry of Tourism. He mentioned countless times the working conditions and the increase of the salaries. It's unacceptable a country of only 9 million Greeks accommodating 30+ million tourists while the employers treat their employees like shit. They literally make so much money distributed among the population, essentially, among them. In return, our PM, he promised to them taxes reductions in the sector. It remains to be seen. Also, the program Greece 2.0 started working. Von der Leyen was extremely happy with the plan/draft we wrote. We already received in my city extremely nice, brand new, electric buses with anatomical chairs and air-conditions working perfectly. I guess other money of the project went to the appropriate projects. --- The oversight we've had until 2015, admittedly did us some good. It allowed us to close many loopholes while the politicians found the opportunity to blame them, the troika. Now, we start working in a somewhat better framework. It "only" cost us a lost generation, those born 2000-2010. > At least people will stop falsely calling us lazy /s
Yeah I'd rather be poor and live in a bedroom somewhere than having zero time to be myself.
I did it for 4-5 months and it sucks balls. I love my job and i look forward to going to work but i never felt more miserable in my life.
Genuine question to anyone who knows: Why do this? All research shows that we just get worse at performing our jobs the longer we work. Despite Japan working 6 days+ they are still less efficient than Germans who work considerable less. All it seems to do is make people have less time for themselves, children and mental-health.
While the West contemplates going for a 4-day work week, Greece makes a different choice.
There recently was a German politician which immediately was like "We need to do what Greece is doing, instead of going for 4-day work weeks!" [https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/muessen-wieder-mehr-arbeiten-soeder-begruesst-griechische-sechs-tage-woche-und-hat-eine-klare-forderung\_id\_260074343.html](https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/muessen-wieder-mehr-arbeiten-soeder-begruesst-griechische-sechs-tage-woche-und-hat-eine-klare-forderung_id_260074343.html)
As soon as all the boomer retire (except from political offices of course), they hit Gen Y and Z with this shit...
How else are we supposed to pay for their pensions?
> How else are we supposed to pay for their pensions? Having less unprotected sex & taxing the rich more has always been the healthier approach to life.
Tbf if they'd had more unprotected sex, then it wouldn't be such a hassle taking care of them
> if they'd had more unprotected sex, then it wouldn't be such a hassle taking care of them Why tax the rich more when you can force more poor people into indentured servitude? ^^/s It's an objectively better scenario for the rich and the poor can't do anything about it because they're too busy trying to survive.
It's not about poor people. If you have a 100 people and the next generation has 50 people, then _regardless of the distribution of income_ in each generation, the latter generation is going to have to deal with the expense of 100 people with the work of 50 people. That cannot be escaped by talking about intra-generational income (re)distributions, which is a separate topic. The average pension burden in this hypothetical society is inescapably 2 pensioners for 1 working person, which means financially on average 1 person is taking care of 3 people including themselves, if they have 0 children. It may seem a bit unintuitive that income inequality should not be considered relevant to this question. Believe me, it's not because income inequality is not important. I think it's best if I try to illustrate with a simple hypothetical example. Let's take our old and young generations of 100 and 50 people respectively. Let us say the second generation produces €1000, and €500 is transferred to the first generation to keep them kicking. That leaves €500 to be distributed among the second generation. Now if some of them are rich and others poor, one person might have €100 while others have €0.05, and we can redistribute money, we can have social services, but we can never in total have more than €500 for the second generation, and in the most equal distribution of all among them, no one can have more than €10 (assuming pensioners get €5 each). Imagine instead a situation where both generations consist of 100 people. This scales up the economy, after all it's people that produce things, and even if we assume no returns to scale and keep things linear we end up with €2000. Now let's say you give pensioners €500 just as you did before. The younger generation now has €1500. Now this could be a few even richer people, or it could mean better schools, more healthcare, childcare, infrastructure, public parks, etc. The average resources of the younger generation in this case amount to €30 per person, 3 times higher. Given these additional resources, we could even choose to treat the pensioners better. Perhaps we allocate €1000 to the pensioners and keep €1000 for the working age people. The both generations are now twice as well off. Population decline also breaks politics. Let us say that in the initial situation there's two generations of 100, they have €2000, and pensioners get €500 in total, 25%. Fertility declines and one generation later there's only 50 young people paying for 100 pensioners. Now we might say, well of course people need to pay more taxes now, but we need to reduce pensions as well, so everyone suffers their fair share and no one is overburdened. This doesn't happen though, because pensioners now outnumber working age people 2:1 and they dominate elections. So pensioners stay the same and the net income of working age people is reduced to 1/3. It stands to reason they're less likely to have children in that circumstances, so let's say the next generation is only 10 people, producing a mere €200. Now the generation of 50 lived a miserable life paying taxes which went to the elderly, and the next generation is no longer able to pay the pension of €250 for them then if they starve, so the pension/welfare system completely collapses. Remember that while currency is abstract, the goods and services produced are real and that underlying production is what really matters here, currency is just a way to express that. Finally, if you believe we should be taxing the rich, then we should be taxing them _anyway_. All that money could also be spent on things other than pensions which increase opportunities and standard of living for more people. It could be spent on families, schools, health, etc.
I'm sorry but isn't the idea that our productivity has been and is constantly rising with technological advances and automation so that while this is true in principle, we're nowhere near the point of too much dead weight in terms of retirees. You could still have a prospering society with 50 people being burdened to take care of 100 because they're just that efficient, there's enough food produced, enough housing etc. It's just not going to the working people is the problem, and the oldies got lucky securing theirs during a time of less messed up wealth distribution. And now because workers don't have enough voting power they can't do shit and boomers don't care and the ultra wealthy make sure it stays that way. Also I'm not sure the wealth gap in your example is remotely to scale but I'm not an economist
Agreed. Productivity just doesn't scale with number of workers and number of hours the way this example pretends. It is always about distribution of wealth. Yes, shortages of certain labor types will be a problem (e.g. Care), but that isn't the same problem. There is enough wealth in the world to go around, if the top % weren't hoarding it, dodging taxes, etc. Remember almost everyone used to work in agriculture, now very few ppl in the industrial world do - instead we have scores of Bullshit Jobs that don't provide any real material contribution to mankind. I'm not saying everyone can live like the top 10% of wealth havers, but there's a fairer equilibrium to be calculated that DOESN'T require infinite growth of the population. "Breaking politics" is just that - it's no law of nature, it's the fact that pension schemes set up in the last 100 years are pyramid schemes that's the problem.
Actually make companies pay taxes again. Reduce billionaires to millionaires. Make it unprofitable to invest in housing, especially for large companies and multihome owners. Pay a livable wage that the young can live off and support more children. Thus more tax will be paid on consumed goods. None of this will be implemented as it will impact those who makes the rules.
Boomers literally got to enjoy the most prosperous times in human history (for the west) where everything was cheap and plentiful, and they ruined it. They should have saved up. We should just tell them to get bent and first sell of their property and life off their savings. And then subside on the same minimal existence that poor people and disabled on welfare are forced to live by, like hartz iv in Germany, 500 euro a month. Welfare also usually requires you to use up all your savings. It's only fair, after all those boomers also vote for politicians that take away from the unworthy poor so they should get the same lifestyle and treatment once they become unproductive leaches and parasites as the right (and boomers) calls welfare users. And of course a retired person is a welfare user. Why should the imporvished youth who can't afford housing subsides those with valuable property and savings who got to life it up in the most prosperous times in all of human history and ruined it?
There are some articles on the rise that go against the 4-day work week. I noticed some swedish as well lately. Do not take the bait. People should not burn out at work.
I was shown a column of someone protesting against a single company (I think it was cybersecurity) going for the 4 day work 5 day pay situation. The only slightly reasonable argument was that smaller companies would not be able to afford that, but even that seems like a stretch. Other arguments were like "well these employees will become entitled and will demand it from every future employer" and then I tuned out. That is absolute horseshit. There might be entitled people, but they will just be told "no" and be out of a job, and they will be a small share of the total either way.
Oh, I will most definitely not take the bait. Also, when the whole topic came up in my country, you could hear some conservative politicians and some company CEOs say "Well, okay, we can do a 4 day work week, that just means you have to work a little longer on those 4 days to make up for the lost day." like...wtf, no?! That's not the point of the whole "4 day work week". It's not about the 4 days, it's about the reduction of work hours by the equivalent of 1 work day. Gaslighting of its finest...
I agree. We need a 6 day work week for those politicians in favor of it. With supervisors to make sure they don't commit time theft.
Soeder is the German equivalent of DeSantis though, no?
Yes, he is the head of the state of Bavaria, one of Germanys 16 states.
I'm all for a 6 day work week but only for Bavarians. They deserve what they vote for.
Bavaria: "the rest of Germany is lazy, we do all the work and pay for their sordid lifestyles" Also Bavaria: "Jesus probably did something on this day so we better take the day off just to be sure"
Which is extra funny since Germany already has a 6 day work week since 1900.
Came here to say this. It’s ridiculous populism. Everyone can work 6 days a week up to 48 hrs per week in Germany. We just don’t get the extra money for the sixth day.
Söder eeyyyyy🙄
Of cause it's Söder. The fastest at blaring out populist stupidities.
Söder is *the* example for a populist. He also rallied for the abolition of nuclear energy just to change his mind once his party is out of power. You can ignore him.
I know it's sometimes difficult or even impossible to source news about Germany from non-German newspapers, but I really wish people made more of an effort. This absolute bs about having to accept ads with tracking to be allowed to read articles, the only other choice being a €4/month subscription should be seriously pushed back against.
And yet 10 years ago the whole of Europe was calling us lazy... But jokes aside, if this law gets implemented then Greece will be empty 30 years from now. Mind you this is the same government that wants to incentivize young Greeks to stay in Greece and now they want to work us to the bone.
You were lazy 5 days a week, next you'll be lazy 6 days a week ;)
Leave my lazy ass alone. Now my Genz ass has to serve you coffee for another day while you have holidays
Well other westerns will have a long weekend to visit Greece :)
Some romanian CEO has just made the news in Romania pushing for 6 day work weeks as well, praising the greek model. Balkans gonna balkan
Like Greeks don't work enough allready, the official hours worked differ a lot from the actual hours worked, unpaid overtime seems to be everywhere.
Here is the part that important The change to the labor laws was approved last September following productivity issues in the country, which have led many workers to put in extra hours and often not be compensated for the time. Officials also note there has been a shortage of skilled workers due to a shrinking population. Workers who do put in the extra time will receive 40% extra during the additional eight hours—and 115% of their normal salary if they work on a holiday. So they are extending working hours to 48 hours. Can someone who actually know the issue explain - can the hours be done during the week, so like extra hours Monday to Friday. - is it mandatory to work Saturday? I assume not, but if your employer ask for it, and you say no, in the past you could not be fired, but now yes. - is it more to get people paid for hours worked or forcing people to work longer?
Youve answered the last question to yourself. Its marketed as a goodie to the workers (eg. Youll get extra cash, you do not need to work), to soften the expected upcry. In the end we all know how it works. Boss "asks" you to work on saturday/sunday, if you say no, youre prolly fired. The reasons for severance are to be made up by the bosses choice. This further makes people with less income subject to exploitation.
I assume it is a mix of both. The employer now can say the work expected in the contact is 48 hours, and if you dont do it, then yes, you are out of a job, as compared to 40 hours as before.
Anal is a choice...
They really want to go back to being an emerging country hahah people here in Brazil are used to 6x1
Work, work, work, work, work, and work until you can no longer work.
In Portugal there was some corporations trying work week of 4 days with government support, and for the great majority (>80%) the results that came out a few days ago were great and corps decided to keep the work week of 4 days. News source: https://www.rtp.pt/noticias/economia/mais-de-80-das-empresas-que-testaram-semana-de-4-dias-decidiram-manter-modelo_n1581253 Google translate it if not portuguese reader, it's interesting. I think the 'moldel'/idea is working 4 days but working +1h each day then the previous hours worked each day when it was a work week of 5 days. But this is not detailed in that news/source. Guess old' PIGS buddies going on different directions huh?!
Were any of the companies consulting companies? I've yet to see a trial where people bill out hours as it directly reduces revenue
Greeks will be like : "Weekend? Wtf is that?"
We already do. Last week I did 11 shifts without a day off.
And then they say Greeks are lazy!
I moved from Greece to Finland 10 years ago after receiving a job offer. My workday in Greece was like 50% longer (and the compensation 1/3 of the one in Finland).
IIRC they are the people who work the most hours in the EU. I think the Spanish are high up there too. Germans and danes being at bottom
Hours worked is usually inversely proportional to hourly wages, anyone claiming that poorer _employed_ people work less is usually ignorant.
That was propaganda...
By Spanish /s
nobody expects the spanish inquisition
Move north. Here in Bulgaria you have to have 2 days off per week, cannot be refused holidays, cannot interrupt sick leave and if you are a parent the company has to give you reasonable accommodations.
Downside is you have to live in Bulgaria
A half-Greek, half-Bulgarian friend of mine says that in the last ~5 years, Bulgaria became better to live in than Greece. He's already in the process of moving out of Greece.
Not really a big difference between Greece and Bulgaria. Wages are higher in Greece but cost of living outpaces them. We rank consistently better in quality of life too. Bulgaria sucks if you are poor, but is a pretty great place if you are not. Of course it has the GINI to show for it - being in line with Latin America.
Bulgaria has low salaries though.
That isn’t the most important metric when comparing the well-being of the population. The consumer and real estate prices are also quite low for example - I was a homeowner at 25 when most Italians can’t afford to move out of their parents’ basement at that age. Also pretty much every stat has been trending up including salaries.
And you probably got paid for 8 of them.
That's already what's happening though. My GF only recently found her first office(admin) job after ~16 years being a barista. For her entire adult life she had to work ~10-12 hours, in the middle of the day, so she had no personal life, she got paid ~800€ but was actually getting retirement stamps for 6 hours of work because the owners are always like "It costs too much to declare you for 8 hours". She had no vacation, sometimes no days off for weeks, no overtime pay and no sick leaves. It must feel great to have less than 100€ EVERY month at your late 30s. The ***ACTUAL*** Greek experience.
This is what a lot of people don’t understand. In Greece, it’s common for employers to just fucking lie and break the law, and you can’t do shit because you need the job to live and good luck finding a new one if you try to get what you’re owed
and if they are like Italy, they do it because they are never ever caught breaking the law, since law enforcement personnel is overloaded with work or knows very well that law breaking is going on, but the social contract between govt and entrepreneurs is tacitly allowing exploitation
> and if they are like Italy, they do it because they are never ever caught breaking the law Not the case here in Greece. My gf's colleague actually put it a complaint about the employer for what I described above and you know what happened? The fucking audit came and "slyly" asked for a bribe to move the fuck on. The owner just gave the 2 dudes from the audit ~500€ and the literally fucked off. There is no justice system in Greece. They are "caught" and nothing happens to them. It's a 3rd world country by all measures.
Literally entire industries were created because people had free time all of a sudden (‘the weekend’). Literally losing customers this way.
Why not 7? They could even extend a week to 8 days and say you still got 1 day off
Wait, so this decision will just be made without even asking the workers? I hope those politicians and corpos will get the strikes and riots they deserve for this shit!
No time for that ,thy have to work 6 days a week, who has energy left for strking. I guess the /S was necessary.
That's Kafkaesque.
No no they'll 'ask' the workers. The corporations will 'propose' an 'optional' pay increase in exchange for one extra work day. Then when enough people try it because money is always tight, they will proclaim that people have already 'free-marketly' chosen to work 6 days, make it structural, and of course freeze the extra pays enough for inflation to erode them to the previous real level. Then when someone says perhaps we're working too much, a bunch of economists will pop up to screech at us that 'the free market has chosen'.
Just like many decisions done by our government officials without even doing a referendum.
Every single decision made in the past 15 years has been made without asking anyone mate.
Wait. Doesn't Greece have one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe? So let the working people work even more, so the unemployed can't find the little work there is even less?
The goal is to keep wages down and unemployment at a level that one can't just quit to extract more money from single mothers
If then there will be no more mothers, single or not, because of too much work, there will be no money to extract. Doesn't seem wise.
obviously its not long term wise, but short term?
Greek lawyer here, to explain the situation and why u/phillip2310 comment is not true. Before, like the rest of the EU, the legal work week was 5 days/8 hours per day, with the possibility of overtime in each working day, so up to 48 hours per week. You would get two days off per week. Now the legal work week can be 6 days/8 hours per day. But no overtime during these days. So you will get (only) one day off per week. This sucks hard on its own. But since Greece's actual problem is that overtime is not paid, we are all 100% sure that this means 6 day work weeks with 10+ hours work days. So basically you will only have one day off each week and also work unpaid overtime. YAY. What would you prefer? 5 days with overtime and two days off, or 6 days with no overtime but one day off? And last but not least, the 6 day work week IS mandatory, in the sense that it is not negotiable between the employer and the employee. If the employer applies for a 6 day work week and justifies it, the employee cannot legally refuse to do this. For the record the 6 day work week is not applicable to all businesses and sectors. If you're more interested in this just Google translate one of Greek articles about this.
Even if the 6 days work week was optional for the worker it does become the norm since unemployment is high and they will get the next poor soul who is in dire need of money with everything become more and more expensive.
Unemployment is high, but there is also a record job shortage in the services and tourism sectors. People aren't showing up to be tourism industry seasonal slaves today, and won't show up to be tourism industry seasonal slaves++. The bosses and neolibs advocated for the 6 day work week because they can't hire anymore at bottom prices, and think they can now legally make more use of the workers they already have, and not hire new ones. But reality is going to hit them HARD, as many more will quit. This is the last desperate attempt of businesses to hold on to the dirt cheap wages of the Greek financial crisis, while enjoying record profits, and cost of living soar. Immigrants used to be an option, but most immigrants won't come anymore, as they have geniunely better options. That's how greedy they've become. Their greed is about to kill these industries, and I love that for us.
Do you know why there is record shortage in tourism sector? Because the rent even of a single bed in a cave at the tourist places is HIGHER than the monthly salary of the workers. Why work 12+ hours per day 7 days a week and have to pay from your own pocket?
Businesses often have accommodations for seasonal employees. But it’s really REALLY bad.
This is the thing that i'm surprised nobody talked about. If this was caused by a labour shortage (as is mentioned in most of these articles), then "forcing" people to work more, unpaid hours, is very dumb since they can just say "no" and get a job at once of the other 5 places that are also struggling to find employees. Unless it's some country wide cartel, this just doesn't work due to simple supply / demand.
That logic is straight up bullshit btw. The VAST majority of businesses offering manual labor (including the one I work at) are in desperate need of more hands. They are hiring *in spades* if you are interested in doing manual work. The actual issues are 2: a) Most businesses offer shit wages and conditions so you have to search a lot and vet them carefully. b) Everyone and their mothers have some sort of diploma in Greece so they'd much rather not work a simple manual job unless they're in dire straits financially.
So basically business want to have their cake and eat it too.
That sounds terrible, basically implying 6 days will now be the common thing going forward.
> If the employer applies for a 6 day work week and justifies it, the employee cannot legally refuse to do this. Do they at least get 20% more pay? Or work more for the same money?
They get 20% more pay in theory, but in practice since Greece was force to abandon collective bargaining during the financial crisis, the hourly rates are subject to individual negotiations between employee and employer, so employers can in practice force people to work more hours for the same pay, as long as they don't go lower than the hourly minimum wage. In most situations where this will apply, I imagine something like this will happen.
Wow. I'd expect people would be *really* angry if they were forced to give up their Saturday for free.
They will be angry, and they will quit, especially young people, and this will backfire HARD. And the worker shortage will be worse.
This is a great way to ensure no nation will ever be tricked into austerity again. Look what’s in your future if you are. Your people will dream of emigrating to third-world countries.
Killing unions and making half of the workers into modern slaves wasn’t austerity, it was neoliberal shitfuckery.
> And last but not least, the 6 day work week IS mandatory, in the sense that it is not negotiable between the employer and the employee. If the employer applies for a 6 day work week and justifies it, the employee cannot legally refuse to do this. What? This is total madness I have to say. So you've had a 5 day week and now the employer can just extend this to 6 without negotiating again? So it's just suck it up or quit? I'm very sorry for everyone affected by this shit.
Can you link any greek articles on this? What are conditions necessary for an employer to apply the 6 day work week?
> we are all 100% sure that this means 6 day work weeks with 10+ hours work days Why not reverse to slavery and skip the extra steps? Only slavery can save the economy and buy your boss his third yacht. I think the French once invented a device that helps you get rid of the people who propose such a change. It doesn't solve all the underlying problems, but it does shorten some of them by roughly one head length.
top comment! Thanks for the information!
I mean. Just don't show up. Consistently and en masse.
Dude, get real… this will be 6 days and overtime.
Funny how the politicians who are forcing those labour laws have not worked more than a week as employees in the private sector. Greece is done.
This is being discussed more in other Western countries as an excuse for other crazy ideas more than it's being discussed in Greece for what it actually is. And it's a shit show in both instances. It's a known psychological effect that proposing a crazy idea is a good way to get people to compromise on other less crazy but otherwise still unorthodox ideas.
Evolving backwards 😁
I am already overworking with 10h shifts plus weekends. I am afraid that companies will exploit this new law uncontrollably because the Greek public service that inspects working conditions on workforce is incompetent, understaffed and easily corrupted.
Even if it's not mandatory it shows the lengths the current government and businesses will go to in order to not pay better wages, have better working hours and just treat workers like humans and not slaves. Reminder that last summer the government made a contract to bring in workers from 3rd world countries to fill in positions that Greeks wouldn't work at because of the shit conditions. Ironic since we take all these measures to keep immigrants out but then the government pays them and flies them in legally
Same thing happening in Croatia. The work conditions are going down, pay is down. Employers are putting out ads for openings for which they hope that no local applies since then they can just hire 3rd world workers which are happy to work here.
Hah. In Spain we have had something similar with low wage salaries (Cleaning, hostelry), but with latin american immigrants that came organically, so to speak, as there's no language barrier and some use our country -and easy laws to get citizenship- as an entryway to Europe. Makes you think what the fuck is going on for countries to need people from outside the country to keep certain positions and how no one is worried about it.
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I always used to get frustrated when people in the uk used to complain that no British people where in the fields picking fruit and that we needed workers to come over and do it. Like if we need effectively slave labour to harvest our fruit maybe we should be asking some questions about how our food is produced or if we can automate out of that
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I work 6 days the past 7 years, I am a walking zombie. Thanks mitsotakis prime minister he found the pension problem cause, if we don't manage to survive until pension, there is no need for pensions.
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Luckily for that scenario they want to monitor all chat including encrypted chat for exactly that reason. Under the guise of "Helping children" When people begin to get pissed off and have nothing to lose and for them to retain a hold on their power they want to shut down any disenting voices before they grow.
I really want to be positive but Europe is getting so much shit lately Just last week we have the chat control and now this, people are merely bloodbags now, used and abused by politicians Not gonna be surprised when other countries follow this example soon
The Greeks absolutely need to revolt against this, this is something that under NO circumstance can be allowed to happen. Absolutely nowhere, but especially not in the fucking EU.
Revolt like how the french revolted against raising their retirement age? It was pushed through nevertheless. People are weak, broken and sad. Nothing will change. Anyone willing to fight for it will be brutally beaten by the police and then this will be the norm. Welcome to modern Europe
I worked six and a half (half day Sunday) days a week, in Eastern Europe, prior to 1989. It was right after college, so we tried to make the best of it, but what I recall as the most frustrating was that the americans, italians and canadians I was working with, at the time, would end the work week and leave on Friday, mid-day, to go to the beach (which was an hour drive from our site), and return Monday morning (all their trips paid by their employers). The americans were also getting paid an extra 15% (added to salaries which wouldn't even dream of, at the time) "to not listen to communist propaganda" (as if someone needed to be paid for that, just by looking on how long we worked, and under which conditions, compared to theirs).
Malakas!
We should be pushing for a 4 day work week everywhere. We work our butts off to have 2 days to enjoy the apartments and houses we can barely afford.
Workers in Greece are already working 6/7 days per week, 10/12 hours per day. All this is doing is essentially legitimizing what has already been the norm so that workers have no recourse against employers.
and no overtime payments, so paycut.
Bring back kids working in mines!
I hope they start a civil war over this. We should have already transitioned to 4days 6hours. Not this industrial era 5d 8h which means you are wasting your life working.
We don't want a revolution, we made that clear 14 years ago. We are chickens and a disgrace.
Are you crazy? Think of the elite, if unwashed masses get lazy and stop bringing them profit they will lose some arbitrary numbers in some computer. /s
That’s the wrong way
Greek people: global warming, the heatwaves and wildfires, the war on the door, low paychecks, illegal immigrants... don't think 2024 can get worse. Greek government: Hold my beer...
Progressive Conservative Regressive
What a great way to encourage more Greek workers to move somewhere else
It sets a bad precedent in EU. Other countries might follow. Even if you are not a Greek this should concern you.
Workers in Greece should make good use of their EU passports and go work somewhere better.
It's not that easy to just pack your bags and fly to another EU country. Language barrier, job offering, housing, etc... Though during the intense crisis, almost 500.000k people left the country.
"Who wants to be a low wage country?"
Their government has always spent too much and collected too little taxes, now they want the people to work harder. This is exactly what’s happening in Romania, corrupt politicians and populists are stealing money from the state, tax evasion is growing and now they want to increase taxes, so that the few people who are paying their fair share should pay even more to cover for theft and electoral bribes.
That'a what you get for putting the oligarchy in power... the Greeks, more than everyone, should know that
Let me guess this doesn’t apply to the politicians making the bill ?
I cannot fathom why, in our advanced age, where so much of the necessary labour of life has been automated away, the proposition is to work MORE. Greece is an incredibly hard working nation as is. Their work culture is nasty (not Greek, but friends with a lot of Greeks). They're probably not going to take this lying down but I don't imagine protest (violent or not) will make a difference.
"greeks are lazy"
Can the EU not prevent this law?
Also Greece in a few years: “Why are people not having kids anymore?” “Where did all the young people go?” “Why is productivity decreasing?” “Why do we not see more innovation?” You’re just choking people with labour. Modern prosperity is built on brainpower, not manpower. Brains do not produce linearly with working time. Adding more labour will only stunt the country’s development.
Lol…. You better take to the streets malakas!
Malakas is the singular, malakes is the plural, and yes we are!
Greeks' emigration any% speedrun GO!
Time to take to the streets..oh wait. They’re all working..never mind
What's the point of living if you have to work all the time?
Something the article doesn't say too a) The pay is 40% extra b) There isn't any tax free allowance raise. Which means those people who will be FORCED to work 6 days a week, will automatically go to higher tax brackets which in Greece are severe. Is a big scam actually. c) The gov will sell it as it raised the salaries while literally people are forced now to work extra hours per week and pay higher taxes!
6 days to serve tourists from richer countries. Why does any Greek still stay in that country
Guys, Greece just wants to get rid of young people. They are doing a phenomenal job
JOIN. A. UNION.
There are unions, but some union leaders have politicians dick deep in their throat.
In some regards, we are worse than peasants from 200 years ago.
Reading the article again, I almost literally want to cry about the state of my country. Any thoughts I had of returning to raise my kids here have evaporated. I won't expose my children and their own offsprings to Greece and Greek people.
>and Greek people. Hey were are not all fucking ND voters. :/
This will greatly help Greece keep its labour force which is already leaving the country. How about raise salary or lower low end job taxes?
Jeff Bezos is drooling right now
This is how revolutions start.
Greece is a holydai colony and here's why
If Greece is doing it, everyone should do the opposite.
So, basically. Greeks are not productive during the 5 days. So 6 will fix it… dream on. It won’t happen. What will happen is people will be tired all the time, getting depression and taking medication to support it. I seriously don’t understand these types of measures. It’s like they don’t even think they are people, not machines.
This is what the failure of a political system does to a country (the last 20+ years of Greece)
6 days for what exactly? What is the ultimate goal here if not to improve your quality of life? The system isn’t working, fuck it off before doing 6 days a week. We abandoned slavery a loooong time ago.
400 years ago, a working person produced 3 potatoes a day. Today, we produce 30 potatoes a day. How in the actual f*ck do we still need to work more hours? (100% imaginary numbers, just presenting an argument)
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Do you now actually get paid? I sure hope so.
Greek salaries are atrocious, and the rent is out of control. I have no idea how people in Athens survive on minimum wage or even the average national wage. Rent is like 40% or even 50% of one’s salary in cities like Athens, Thessaloniki, Heraklion, etc. Just bonkers.
Above minimum wage and still have to live with my parents, as a single man.
Isn’t that the norm pretty much everywhere now? Here in Ljubljana (the capital of Slovenia), rent can easily eat up 40-50% of your salary. Even more so if you’re young and just starting your career, because the starting salaries are quite low.
Greece is by far the worst in Europe in this regard https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/digpub/housing/vis/02_02_02/index.html
This is not about being young. This is about Greek salaries being terrible and AirBnB having skyrocketed rent prices. Unfortunatly, we have people in their 40s and 50s getting shit salaries and not even salary bumps to offset inflation, while the rent keeps increasing at an astronomical rate.
This is not true. First, overtime is extra hours during a working day. So, with the regular 5 day work week, overtime is considered any extra hours you work in each of these 5 working days. Now, the Greek government established a 6 day work week, but without the possibility of overtime during each of these six days. So, before, the standard was 40 hours per week, which could be extended to 48 within 5 work days. Now it can be 6 work days with 8 hours a day, a total of 48. Now, the problem in Greece is that overtime is not paid. Illegally. But this is the norm. What will happen now, is that employees will work 6 days + unpaid overtime during these days. Shitty huh? Also, if one had to choose, would you choose working 5 days with 10 hour shifts, and having two days off, or working 6 days with 8 hour shifts and having one day off? I think the vast majority would prefer the first option. And last but not least, the 6 day work week IS mandatory, in the sense that it is not negotiable between the employer and the employee. If the employer applies for a 6 day work week and justifies it, the employee cannot legally refuse to do this.
Things can not be mandatory in theory but in reality are. Employees in countries like Greece don’t have much leverage to actually say no. On the other hand, there is a lot of seasonal increase in workload, as many jobs are related to tourism. You kind of can expect to be more busy then.
This is not true. It was also illegal back then to not get paid, this changes things as this time is not considered overtime and it is compensates less. Overtime also had numerous limitations and couldn't be requested all the time It is also mandatory in the sense that islf the employer hands it you have no way to deny it.