The official reason for the introduction of the six-day work week is that there is a shortage of skilled workers on the Greek labor market as the population keeps shrinking and the country losing scores of thousands of workers who fled during the economic and austerity crisis in search of jobs in other countries.
So “The austerity and beatings will continue until morale improves.”
Easier to beat them than to pay
Headline in three months: “Less work getting done than in five-day week.”
Government and management will blame lazy workers. Workers will blame government, management and burnout. Truth will be closer to the latter, but a few actually lazy employees and some innocent scapegoats will be fired to preserve the bottom line. Burnout will increase.
But at least the bosses got their bonus this month.
“Government introduces new seven-day work week to compensate for decreased productivity”
The Greeks are insane for going along with this. Revolutions have started over less. Clearly their politicians no longer have the best interests of the Greek people in mind.
I don’t get something about the article. They are saying that there is a labour shortage so they need to do this but they also say that the employers have all the power.
Usually, a labour shortage means that the employees have the power so you’d have thought that they’d have been able to tell the employers to piss off when they try to increase their hours.
Yeah, that’s certainly one odd aspect. Also, there’s a ton of other methods to handle labour shortages. Like activating underused groups, such as women. Or offering retraining so people can switch to different jobs. And higher pay for sectors with shortages doesn’t hurt either, considering the already very low pay in Greece.
Running your existing workforce ragged is NOT the way to deal with this.
But hey, maybe we’re missing some cultural or political piece of the puzzle as to why they went this route.
That’s interesting. A shorter week is the way things are trending, and seems to mostly offset the loss of total productivity with better productivity-per-time. I wonder if this will actually help anything.
Narrator: It didn’t.
Greece gonna Greece, I guess.
They have 10% unemployment… it won’t
Depends what.
Customer-facing work: you can stay open longer.
Office work: yeah, since productivity plummets, I don’t think it helps much, if at all.
Greek here.
I and many thousands of people like me have already been working 6 or 7 day weeks for years now. I’ve worked 50 hours this past week (no paid overtime either) and I’ve done 70 hour weeks this year, but not regularly, so I’m actually one of the lucky ones.
The only difference this makes is legalizing it so boss can’t be sued or fined.
Step 1: Let asylum seekers drown in the Mediterranean Sea
Step 2: Greek people have to work 6 days a week
Step 3: ?
I saw this argument / line of thought in a couple of similar topics already, and I gotta say this really only works if your oblivious enough to believe all/most asylum seekers want to stay in Greece.
But sure, it’s a nice catchphrase.
Well who would want to stay where the workweek is so grueling? Make it a 30 hour week, cut the application paperwork, and see who stays
Fair enough, simple solutions to complex problems are rarely sufficient.
It is still bizarre if you think about it.
Well it’s a good example how Conservatives use populism to make people vote against their interests.
It’s bad for Labour, but most other sources are reporting it as 8hr day max, with the extra hours being paid at T+40%.
They couldn’t even track or enforce their previous 5 day work week when errant employers made their workers work beyond 5 days or mandated maximum hours, there is no chance in hell they will catch unpaid overtime.
At least when this inevitably shows a drop in productivity it can be used as ammo for reducing the workweek.
I would quit my job so fast
If you don’t need it
I would just kill myself.
I don’t get it. If the reason for this really is that there are not enogh workers present, then I why won’t the employees tell their employers to go fuck themselves? I mean it doesn’t sound like there aren’t enough job offers on the market.
