I know that Greece has had economic woes for some time, but I was surprised to learn that the average Greek worker puts in more hours per year than the average American and significantly more than the EU average. With the recent approval of six day workweeks in Greece, while conversations about shifting to four day workweeks are occurring elsewhere in the world, I’m curious as to what has led to this situation occurring?
In: Economics
For starters the 6 day work week is simply the codification of something that has been the norm for decades. People were already working 6 or 7 days per week and almost always overtime, most often unpaid. This new legislation simply seeks to remove any legal recourse employees had, not that it makes much difference since authorities were very slow to respond to reports and they rarely actually managed to prosecute anyone, but also because since it’s the norm there’s no alternative. Finding work where you’re not expected to work 10-12 hours per day every day is the exception to the norm, so for many it feels pointless to change jobs or report an employer for something that’s literally the norm everywhere.
It’s an incredibly complex subject to analyze the full timeline between post war Greece and now but on a very basic level the problem is massive wealth inequality, corruption and lack of oversight, and an over reliance on the service and tourism industries. Greece remains competitive by offering lower prices, but to offer lower prices they have to keep wages low, but with wages low while using the Euro as a currency and needing to import most goods this inevitably puts a strain on the people, who are deadlocked in a situation where their neolib governments only care to cater the interests of industrialists who drain the people for everything they got because they have no oversight.
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