From the construction industry to the tourism sector, Greek employers cannot find the staff they need. The government's solution: longer working hours. A new law enables employers to implement a six-day work week
Still sucks that it could be mandatory. I work in a government job in Australia and we have "Flexible Hours" which means that any time worked under or over the standard 7:30hrs per day counts towards a flex balance. Then we can use the excess flex balance to then taking shorter days or even take a couple days off if we have the balance for it. It works wonders for staff morale and retention.
Man, if I still lived in an EU country and the government pulled this shit I’d be making the most of that sweet freedom-of-movement. Way to drive all the skills out of your economy.
That's exactly what tens if not hundreds of thousands of young Greeks have done in the last 15 years.
Greece has a brain drain problem. This ridiculous measure is actually sold by the government as an attempt to address the shortage of certain skilled worker categories. By ... incentivizing the few that are left to pack up and leave. In practice, it's just class warfare.
The Greek ruling class is a bunch of grifters, landlords, smugglers and gangsters (always have been, since 1830) and they are basically betting on a "recovery" based on cheap labour.
A good example of how this is not the case is the UK and Dentists. When Brexit hit and they left the EU (picture if the right in the US had their immigration way), a ton of immigrant Dentists had to leave. It was easy to stay before because of the EU. Now there is a huge shortage of dentists. Surprise surprise.
in my shithole country we have %30 unemployment and 6-day work week. Also it's all slave wages regardless of your degree or experience. It's a corrupt shithole system that enables itself to keep on staying shit by exploiting poor people and getting the rich richer.
This is a false dichotomy. Employers can't find the staff they need at the wages they are willing to pay. Immigrants are the scapegoat, not the solution.
For employers it can also be a solution, since you can pay them whatever and trust that they can't go to the authorities about it or won't join unions and so on
Flawed. What jobs are Greece lacking workers for? Can the said migrants fill those roles while simultaneously getting integrated into the societal norms and customs?
If yes. Cool.
If no. Not a solution.
I don't agree to the pushing people into the sea. But one problem is not the solution to a different one.
Quota migrants are the way to go. Human trafficking is bad.
Migrants don't join unions. Which make them way cheaper. A very cool way for the owning class to exploit the workers and bypass any union/organized labour restriction.
The thing is in this case, it's only human suffering. People don't actually work nonstop all week. Giving them fewer hours over four days means they're more productive for those days because they're not dragging out their work to fill the arbitrary 40 hours they have to work for. So companies pay workers the same, but can save money in amenities and office space or whatever by using it less AND have more productive workers. Longer work weeks don't actually make companies more money (oversimplifying and speaking broadly).
Greece had been effed since the austerity economics were placed on them due to the great big financial crisis where boys were declared to be too big to fail. Remember only regular working people are allowed to fail.
After 15 years of recession and austerity and three rescue packages that came with tough conditions attached, labor in Greece is no longer strictly regulated.
Collective agreements have been frozen for years, and in many businesses, staff work on the basis of individual employment contracts.
Making sure that the authorities can do such monitoring tasks effectively is not a priority for the conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Kazakos is in favor of collective wage agreements, which are, however, being increasingly limited by legislation passed by the ruling conservative New Democracy (ND) government.
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.
The new Greek regulation on the six-day work week and the reduction in arbitration proceedings that comes with it are turning back the clock, Kazakos told DW.
The original article contains 812 words, the summary contains 145 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
At least they are legally employing people, in other countries in Southern Europe people work an illegal amount of time but as long as the official contract declares a lower amount of hours it's fine (neither retirements funds nor taxes nor insurance are paid for the extra time, obviously).