From the construction industry to the tourism sector, Greek employers cannot find the staff they need. The government’s solution: longer working hours. A new law enables employers to implement a six-day work week
After 15 years of recession and austerity and three rescue packages that came with tough conditions attached, labor in Greece is no longer strictly regulated.
Collective agreements have been frozen for years, and in many businesses, staff work on the basis of individual employment contracts.
While the 40-hour work week is still officially in place, employers are permitted to require staff to work up to two unpaid hours per day for a limited period in return for more free time.
In theory, this additional work is voluntary. In reality, however, workers in many businesses and workplaces are forced to work longer hours without receiving any form of compensation.
The authorities — which are themselves short-staffed — rarely carry out checks to make sure that labor law is being observed. Making sure that the authorities can do such monitoring tasks effectively is not a priority for the conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
But even before the law on the six-day work week comes into force on July 1, Greek workers work longer hours than any other workforce in Europe. With an average 41 hours per week, they work more than all other EU citizens, according to the EU’s statistics agency, Eurostat. What’s more, the pay they get for these long hours is low by European standards.
With a minimum monthly wage of €830($887), Greece ranks 15th in the EU in this respect. In terms of purchasing power, it ranks second last in Europe.
Plenty of different reasons.
Historically, Greece was a poor country in Europe because it was the periphery of the Ottoman empire and therefore barely received investment.
Through the 20th century, the country went through pretty corrupt governments (one of them being a dictatorship).
When they joined the European market, it was already a very unproductive country in relative terms, which tends to force you into remaining in the periphery under normal market conditions; and their most educated citizens saw a very easy and profitable opportunity in just migrating out.
On top of that, the only sector of the Greek economy that had any sort of strength was tourism, which very rarely provides good wages.
By the 2007 crisis, they already had a dangerously high debt. Because they were, again, a tourism-focused economy, when the countries that had the most tourists going to Greece entered into recession, Greece’s income plumetted as well, and the debt just soared.
A little bit later, Greeks elected Syriza, which had simply accepted that they were in a debt spiral that would ultimately crush the country. Syriza’s leaders told the other European governments that their debt had to be renegotiated (annoying for Greece’s creditors, but at least it would be possible for them to pay in some capacity), or they’d leave the Euro-zone and just declare bankruptcy (thus they wouldn’t pay back anything) (terrible for Greece, but perhaps not as terrible as the alternative).
The rest of Europe told them to fuck off for a variety of reasons (plenty of German newspapers had chosen Greece as their sacrificial lamb, often calling the people of Southern European countries lazy, the Spanish president back then wanted to crush Syriza because they had been associated with a growing Spanish opposition party, generally a lot of them were into fanatical fiscal conservatism).
Then Syriza chose not to leave the Euro-zone anyway (which provoked Varoufakis to leave the government, out of principle), and just stick to managing the country’s misery. It has only been shit year after shit year for Greece since then, as any possibility of steering into a different direction was shot dead. It’s just a country without hope at this point.
