Whereas some international locations on the planet are contemplating a change to a four-day working week, Greece is swinging in the wrong way.
Its authorities is implementing a brand new six-day work schedule which falls beneath an employment regulation titled Regulation 5053/2023. The regulation is voluntary for corporations to undertake, and the concept is to kick-start the economic system in a rustic that’s nonetheless rising from the wreckage of Europe’s worst monetary disaster in a long time.
However as a number of international locations and firms globally mull the concept of adopting four-day working weeks to enhance staff’ high quality of life, why is Greece as a substitute including a further day?
What does the brand new regulation say?
Greece’s new regulation offers employers in some industries, together with companies that provide 24/7 providers, the precise to compel staff to work a sixth day in return for a further 40 p.c of their each day wage added to their common each day wage on the additional working day.
So if a employee’s each day wage is $100, they usually beforehand earned $500 in per week, they may now earn a further $140, taking their weekly earnings as much as $640.
The regulation is just not necessary. Nevertheless, if an organization does undertake it, it should apply uniformly to all its staff. Moreover, employers, beneath the regulation, are required to let their staff know a minimum of 24 hours earlier than any new shift begins, with no further extra time past the eight hours allowed that day.
Staff may also be allowed to have a second part-time job and work as much as 13 hours per day in whole, permitting them to clock in 65 to 78 working hours per week.
Greece’s meals and tourism sectors should not included within the new regulation, as they’ve beforehand been allowed so as to add a sixth working day, in response to the Athens Labour Unions Group, or EKA.
The coverage got here into impact on July 1. It was permitted final September as a part of a spread of latest labour legal guidelines introduced by the right-leaning, pro-business authorities of Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Why is Greece’s authorities in favour of longer working hours?
“The nucleus of this laws is worker-friendly, it’s deeply growth-oriented,” Mitsotakis stated earlier than the Greek parliament endorsed the regulation in September 2023.
The Greek chief stated each the nation’s ageing inhabitants – a difficulty he described as a “ticking time bomb” – and a dearth of expert staff have made the brand new scheme needed. Greater than 500,000 Greeks have left the nation since 2010, when the nation’s debt disaster erupted, in response to knowledge from Eurostat.
That persevering with disaster, coupled with the consequences of Europe’s migration disaster – which Greece is deeply mired in – has crippled the nation’s economic system.
The brand new coverage’s rationale is only financial, because the intention is to drive up productiveness and, due to this fact, Greece’s gross home product (GDP), stated Elizabeth Gosme, the director of COFACE Households Europe, a rights-based alliance of organisations.
“From an financial viewpoint, [the policy] is just not utterly irrational,” Gosme instructed Al Jazeera.
George Dimitriadis, the youth normal secretary of the Normal Confederation of Greek Staff (GSEE), added that rising productiveness and making Greece extra aggressive on the worldwide market are the primary causes the federal government has bucked the worldwide pattern in direction of four-day weeks to undertake the controversial new regulation.
“[The law] emerged throughout a interval when the federal government was looking for methods to spice up the economic system and improve competitiveness,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
The federal government has additionally stated that establishing formal guidelines a few six-day working week helps eradicate undeclared work and is supposed to extend staff’ revenue, in response to a press release from the nation’s Ministry of Labour in June.
Why are critics against a six-day week?
Worker wellbeing
Gosme cautioned that, from a human wellbeing perspective, the brand new scheme might spell “catastrophe”.
Quite a few research have proven that overwork has a detrimental influence on one’s psychological well being and may usually result in burnout, she stated.
In keeping with Eurostat, Greeks already work longer hours than most Europeans.
Unions have been among the many most vocal critics of the brand new coverage with 1000’s of Greek public sector staff, together with academics, medical doctors and transport workers, having marched in Athens on September 21, 2023, a day earlier than the regulation handed.
Trains and buses ran lowered providers, state hospitals operated with emergency staffing and many faculties closed that day because the protesters marched to parliament.
The GSEE stated the regulation would result in a deterioration of working circumstances, improve skilled burnout and cut back the standard of life for staff.
“This strategy is regressive and doesn’t align with fashionable traits that promote work-life steadiness and the advance of staff’ wellbeing,” Dimitriadis stated.
Financial influence
“Whereas supporters argue {that a} six-day work week will improve productiveness, the GSEE is anxious that the long-term penalties will probably be unfavorable, resulting in increased healthcare prices and lowered productiveness as a result of burnout,” he added.
Impact on girls
Furthermore, the regulation will disproportionately have an effect on girls, who nonetheless tackle the burden of childcare in a rustic that’s largely conventional, Gosme stated.
“The place do folks – particularly girls – make time for a caring function?” she requested, including that caregivers usually want extra versatile work hours.
With out entry to skilled care providers – the scenario for most individuals worldwide, she stated – households need to step up, and a few folks, largely girls, “could even be pressured to cease working fully”.
The brand new regulation, due to this fact, impacts not simply staff’ wellbeing, however may also have an effect on girls’s equality, Gosme stated.
Lack of session
Lawmakers from the primary opposition, the left-wing Syriza celebration, have stated the federal government is pushing “a secret agenda” towards staff, whereas the Communist Celebration of Greece (KKE), has referred to as the invoice “monstrous”.
Staff’ rights campaigners are calling for higher dialogue with the federal government about this concern.
“The GSEE believes that an open dialogue between the federal government, employers and staff is important to discovering options that promote financial development with out sacrificing staff’ rights and wellbeing,” Dimitriadis stated. “They suggest different insurance policies that improve productiveness via technological upgrades and employee coaching, reasonably than via elevated working hours.”
Which international locations are testing four-day working weeks?
Whereas Greece is forging forward with an extended working week, the pattern elsewhere has been to undertake a shorter, four-day rota.
In 2022, Belgium handed laws permitting staff to condense their hours into 4 days as a substitute of 5. In April this yr, Singapore stated staff might request shorter work weeks and extra versatile hours.
Moreover, pilot schemes have been trialled in the US, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, South Africa, Canada, Spain, Eire and Iceland.
Within the case of the UK, of the 61 corporations who trialled a four-day working week, 54 have continued, with 31 saying they might make the transfer everlasting.
Gosme defined that in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, many across the globe got here to understand the significance of work-life steadiness, particularly as folks misplaced their jobs or had been pressured to make money working from home – some for the primary time.
Lots of the four-day working week trials started shortly after the pandemic, with shorter working weeks seen as a vital part of transferring in direction of reaching this steadiness.
What do consultants say about the advantages of a four-day week?
In 2022, one of many world’s largest trials of shorter work schedules confirmed that staff who put in 4 days had been simply as productive as they had been over a five-day week.
4 Day Week International, the nonprofit that ran the trial with 33 corporations and greater than 900 staff within the US and Eire, referred to as it a “resounding success on just about each dimension”.
The nonprofit’s four-day trial in the UK final yr, in the meantime, noticed a 71 p.c lower in worker burnout and a 35 p.c common improve in revenues.
The organisation’s pilot schemes additionally confirmed constructive ends in non-Western economies, together with South Africa and Brazil, the place will increase in each income and worker wellbeing had been proven.
Moreover, the World Financial Discussion board has hosted a number of panels with advocates of the reform. Throughout its annual assembly in Davos final yr, Sander van ‘t Noordende, CEO of human assets consulting agency Randstad, stated the four-day working week was “a enterprise crucial”.
Are every other international locations considering a six-day week?
Six-day working weeks, in the meantime, have been frequent for a while inside many corporations in China, the place some staff work beneath the follow dubbed “996” – working from 9am to 9pm, six days per week. Staff have died because of exhaustion from the follow, which is unlawful within the nation regardless of being comparatively widespread, in response to media stories.
Some corporations within the US are additionally transitioning to six-day weeks by 2025, US enterprise journal Fortune has reported. And tech conglomerate Samsung applied a brand new, longer-week schedule for its executives in South Korea in April this yr.