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Government Building

The Greek legislature has approved a hotly debated work legislation that enables 13-hour working days, despite fierce resistance and nationwide protests.

The administration asserted the law will revamp Greek work laws, but critics from the left-wing faction labeled it as a "harmful law."

Key Provisions of the Recently Passed Labor Law

Under the freshly approved legislation, yearly extra hours is capped at one hundred and fifty hours, while the regular 40-hour week remains in place.

The government insists that the longer shift is voluntary, only applies to the business sector, and can exclusively be implemented for up to thirty-seven days annually.

Political Support and Resistance

The recent ballot was backed by MPs from the ruling conservative party, with the centre-left party – currently the primary resistance – rejecting the bill, while the progressive group did not vote.

Worker organizations have organized two general strikes calling for the bill's withdrawal this month that brought transportation and services to a standstill.

Official Defense and Employee Protections

A senior official supported the legislation, stating the changes align Greek laws with current employment realities, and accused opposition leaders of misleading the citizens.

The laws will give employees the choice to accept extra work with the current company for increased compensation, while ensuring they cannot be dismissed for declining extra hours.

The measure complies with European Union working-time regulations, which cap the mean workweek to forty-eight hours counting extra hours but permit flexibility over a year, according to the administration.

Opposition Viewpoints and Union Reactions

But, critics have accused the administration of weakening workers' rights and "pushing the country back to a medieval work era." They argue local workers currently put in more time than the majority of EU citizens while receiving lower pay and still "face financial difficulties."

A major labor organization stated flexible working hours in practice mean "the end of the eight-hour day, the destruction of personal time and the legalisation of excessive labor."

Recent Workplace Reforms and Economic Context

Last year, the country enacted a six-day working week for certain sectors in a attempt to stimulate the economy.

New laws, which started at the start of July, permit workers to work up to forty-eight hours in a workweek as opposed to forty.

EU Labor Data and National Economic Indicators

• Throughout the European Union in the previous year, the longest working weeks were observed in Greece (39.8 hours), then Bulgaria, Poland (38.9) and Romania (38.8).
• The lowest work hours in the union is in the Netherlands (32.1), as per EU statistics.
• Starting January 2025, Greece's national base pay was €968 a month, placing it in the bottom group among EU countries.
• Joblessness, which had peaked at twenty-eight percent during the economic downturn, was eight point one percent in the summer compared with an European mean of 5.9%, data from Eurostat indicate.
• Greece is recovering since its decade-long financial troubles, which concluded in recent years, but wages and quality of life continue to be among the poorest in the European Union.