🔗 Share this article

Government Building

The Greek parliament has ratified a contentious work legislation that enables extended-length work shifts, despite strong opposition and nationwide strike actions.

Government officials asserted the measure will revamp the country's labor regulations, but opposition figures from the left-wing party described it as a "regulatory disaster."

Main Elements of the New Work Legislation

According to the freshly approved legislation, annual overtime is also at one hundred and fifty hours, while the standard forty-hour week continues as before.

Officials maintains that the longer workday is optional, only applies to the business sector, and can exclusively be implemented for up to 37 days each year.

Parliamentary Backing and Opposition

The recent ballot was supported by MPs from the ruling centre-right party, with the centre-left party – now the primary resistance – rejecting the legislation, while the progressive party abstained.

Labor unions have staged two general strikes calling for the bill's withdrawal recently that halted public transport and services to a stop.

Official Justification and Employee Safeguards

The Labor Minister supported the bill, stating the changes align national laws with current labor-market realities, and accused opposition leaders of misleading the citizens.

These regulations will provide workers the choice to accept additional hours with the current company for increased compensation, while guaranteeing they will not be fired for declining extra hours.

This complies with European Union labor regulations, which cap the mean workweek to forty-eight hours including extra hours but allow adjustments over a year, according to the administration.

Critical Perspectives and Labor Reactions

But, critics have charged the administration of eroding employee protections and "driving the nation back to a medieval work era." They say local employees currently put in more time than most Europeans while earning less and still "struggle to make ends meet."

A major labor organization said variable shifts in reality mean "the end of the eight-hour day, the destruction of family and social life and the authorization of excessive labor."

Previous Workplace Reforms and Economic Background

In 2024, Greece introduced a six-day working week for specific sectors in a bid to boost economic growth.

Recent laws, which came into effect at the start of July, permit workers to work up to forty-eight hours in a workweek as opposed to forty.

European Labor Statistics and National Financial Indicators

• Throughout the European Union in the previous year, the highest working weeks were observed in the Hellenic Republic, then Bulgaria, Poland (38.9) and Romania.
• The shortest work hours in the union is in the Netherlands, according to EU statistics.
• Starting this year, the nation's national base pay was €968 a month, placing it in the bottom group among European nations.
• Joblessness, which had reached a high at 28% during the financial crisis, was 8.1% in the summer versus an EU average of five point nine percent, data from Eurostat indicate.
• Greece is recovering since its decade-long financial troubles, which concluded in recent years, but salaries and living standards continue to be among the lowest in the EU.