The supply might be worthwhile for workers: for the sixth working day, they may obtain a 40 p.c pay enhance, and if it’s a Sunday or public vacation, they may obtain 115 p.c extra. This is able to permit Greeks to work extra sooner or later than they already do: they work essentially the most hours per week within the EU.
Regardless of the deliberate extra funds, unions criticize the regulation as exploitation, however Labor Minister Adonis Georgiadis is undeterred: “Since there’s a nice scarcity of employees, particularly in business, additional time is being labored – and that is usually paid beneath the desk,” he argued through the debate on the regulation in parliament. With the brand new regulation, nonetheless, everybody would have the precise to extra-paid particular work and unlawful work might be put to a cease.
Expert labour scarcity attributed to monetary disaster
The scarcity of expert employees in Greece is especially as a result of nation’s extreme monetary disaster from 2010 to 2018. At the moment, the nation was on the verge of chapter and a whole lot of 1000’s of well-educated younger folks emigrated to hunt their fortune overseas. Greece has not recovered from this mind drain to at the present time, though the financial system is on the up.
The shortage of employees, regardless of an unemployment price of presently round 11 p.c, impacts not solely industrial corporations and the IT sector, but additionally agriculture and tourism. Nonetheless, the conservative Greek authorities beneath Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is looking for different options. For instance, makes an attempt are being made to recruit seasonal employees from Egypt, India and different rising nations for harvest work and as service and cleansing workers.
Legislation targets industrial corporations
The brand new regulation on the six-day week, alternatively, is geared toward corporations that need to function twelve or 24 hours a day, seven days per week – corresponding to industrial corporations, but additionally telecommunications corporations and different service suppliers. The general public sector and state-owned corporations are additionally among the many goal teams. The parable of lazy Greeks, which was unfold by quite a few worldwide, and particularly German, media through the monetary disaster, is as soon as once more refuted. In response to the statistics company Eurostat, the Greeks prime the European listing of weekly working hours with 39.8 hours. In Germany, the typical weekly working hour is 34 hours. Nonetheless, the brand new regulation from Athens stipulates that Greeks mustn’t work excessively both: 48 hours per week is the utmost.
