In a controversial transfer for some analysts, Greece has launched a six-day workweek for sure industries beginning this month in a bid to spice up productiveness and employment within the southern European nation.
The regulation, which got here into pressure on July 1, presents the chance for a standard 40-hour workweek to be prolonged to 48 hours per week for some companies, however has confronted backlash amongst some unions, a number of studies indicated lately.
The transfer to increase the workweek by one other day comes on the odd time when different nations are more and more switching to four-day working trials, together with Europe’s largest economic system Germany.
After outpacing different Europeans when it comes to financial progress, the nation as soon as plagued with the continent’s worst monetary disaster is introducing a brand new working scheme, terming it as “growth-oriented.”
It is hoped that Greece’s six-day workweek plan will assist fight undeclared work that results in tax evasion, in response to Greek public broadcaster ERTNews.
Tourist companies and the meals trade are usually not included within the coverage.
Greece, already on the prime amongst Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations, has a median weekly working time of 39.8 hours or 1,886 a yr, in response to the OECD knowledge.
The European common for folks aged 20-64 of their essential job within the EU was 36.1 hours in 2023, in response to Eurostat knowledge.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis stated the “nucleus of this legislation is worker-friendly. It is deeply growth-oriented,” the Guardian first reported earlier this week.
A spokesperson for Greece’s Ministry of Labor and Social Security instructed the BBC the coverage utilized to “two specific types of businesses.”
The BBC report on Wednesday cited these as companies that function constantly, 24 hours, seven days every week, utilizing rotating shifts and companies that function 24 hours a day, 5 or 6 days every week, additionally with rotating shifts.
“In both cases, the extra working day option is an exceptional measure, permissible only in response to increased workload,” stated the spokesperson.
“Greek people already work the longest hours per week in Europe. Now they may be forced to work a sixth day, after this Greek (government) decision,” John O’Brennan, professor of EU Law from Maynooth University, Ireland, stated by way of social media platform X, previously Twitter, on Monday.
People on pensions, who’ve additionally been inspired to work underneath the laws, have weighed into the controversy.
“What the government is essentially saying is ‘go and work longer. We’ll turn a blind eye even if you’re a pensioner,’” The Guardian quoted Grigoris Kalomoiris, who heads the union of retired lecturers (Pesek), as saying.
With the newest determination, regardless of concentrating on progress Greece seems to search out itself in the other way to different nations, with some claiming that the four-day weeks coverage has confirmed profitable in a handful of corporations when trialed in Germany, Belgium and Iceland.
Some economists alternatively opine the concept of the shorter workweeks as lukewarm, saying that the answer to labor shortages could be longer, not shorter hours. In the case of Greece and the broader impression of the brand new coverage when it comes to financial progress, solely time can inform how the introduction of it would ultimately play out.
Source: www.dailysabah.com