Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/03/greece-enacts-six-day-working-week.html
…
11 Likes
Damn, sad to see this kind of backsliding. Not that long ago Greece let a lot of people retire pretty early (as low as 50, depending on the profession) and had one of the lowest average retirement ages around.
21 Likes
Can’t find the article I saw it, but it claims to help unemployment.
How can they say that with a straight face? You’re going to hire more people because you can use the ones you have more? How the heck does that follow?
30 Likes
I’m sure that the opportunity to work even more for the same pay will slow the massive exodus of young people from Greece.
Of all my nephews and nieces who grew up in Greece, I think about 2 of them have stayed after they finished school - and both of them are taking over their parents business (or at least on track to do so). All the rest stayed in school as long as possible (cheap education) and have emigrated to elsewhere in Europe.
This initiative will not change that trend.
24 Likes
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.
I’m sure those Greek workers are glad they have freedom of movement within the EU.
18 Likes
I heard about this a few days ago from a friend of mine in Athens. To say she is not happy is an understatement.
14 Likes
I’m pretty sure those two things are related. When a large portion of your work force retires early, you need to make those still working do even more to make up the difference.
4 Likes
Or, and this is just a thought, how about not throwing out immigrants who want to come to your country, are young and willing to work? Is that a crazy thought?
15 Likes
You actually think the additional hours will help to pay for retirement, as opposed to being used to pad profits?
9 Likes
but but they’re stealing all the jobs. /s
all the six day work week jobs. 
15 Likes
If only there were migrants coming to Greece, looking for safety and jobs… sadly there are none… /s
12 Likes
Awfully, worse than that
13 Likes
This is nuts. The 40 hour workweek isn’t based on good management practice or even anything rational or evidence-based - it’s just a combination of arbitrarily dividing the day into thirds (one for sleeping, one for commuting - er, leisure, one for working), which we now know is an inefficiently long number of hours of work, and labor carving out a few days off (which results in workweeks we also know are too long, from an efficiency standpoint). All the evidence points to shorter workweeks resulting in better work and personal life outcomes. On top of which, Greece has very high unemployment, to which shorter work-weeks are usually a response. The justification for this is that employers “can’t find workers” which, unless you have really low unemployment, just means they can’t find workers at the low wages they’re willing to pay. This is just going to make things worse.
Given the extremely high unemployment rate, even if they weren’t (absurdly) claiming that, it’s something that they should be considering in every labor ruling. But they obviously aren’t, because there’s no argument to be made that this somehow helps that problem.
The people who will move are those with education and skills that are in demand, leaving behind people who tend to lack what employers are looking for, thereby making the situation even worse. (Maybe they’ll institute 60 hour workweeks in response…)
Greece: “We can’t take in immigrants, we have such high unemployment! We must sadly be cruel because all our efforts are devoted to helping our native workers.”
Also Greece: “We’ll reduce the number of jobs because employers want it. Fuck our native workers.”
11 Likes
I spent a few months working in Korea about 20 years ago, and the norm there was to put in at least a half day of work on Saturdays. In my experience very little productive work ever actually got accomplished on Saturdays, and folks mostly lounged around drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and basically showing up for appearances’ sake alone. Then apparently the work culture changed a bit for the better in the following years, with 5 day workweeks becoming the norm but I’m seeing new reports that 6-day workweeks are starting to make a return there. It’s nuts!
10 Likes
The quotes around the phrase “worker-friendly” should always be seen as scare quotes.
Have no doubt that the Heritage Foundation, the AEI, and other MAGA-enabling think tanks are already planning this nonsense for Americans should they get their autocracy. One of the core principles of American conservatism is making sure that the peons know their place.
8 Likes
I worked for a couple US branches of Korean game companies (with a fair number of Korean coworkers) and they talked about expectations in Korea that the typical salaryman would also work incredibly long hours each day (to the point where people often didn’t have enough hours off for 8 hours sleep) and would be exhausted all the time. (The game industry is even worse.) Even in the US, I certainly noticed there were expectations about working performatively (putting in one’s appearance for long hours in the office, even though nothing got done). With all these countries, it’s all vibes-based management, not even the pretense of being evidence-based in work practices (much less any nod to livable labor practices).
8 Likes
here too, often as not.
5 Likes
more companies have ordered their executives to come to the office on Saturdays to discuss strategies to overcome the recession
If executives aren’t discussing strategy during the working week, what are they doing?
5 Likes
Maybe they should focus on fixing their tax collection instead of causing further brain drain.
3 Likes
I almost feel like it’s universally true, only some countries have powerful enough labor to push back against it and fight to institute labor policies that ultimately benefit companies, against the companies’ will.
2 Likes
