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Government Building

The Greek legislature has given the green light a hotly debated labor reform that enables extended-length work shifts, despite strong opposition and countrywide strike actions.

Government officials claimed the law will update Greek work laws, but opposition figures from the left-wing faction labeled it as a "harmful law."

Key Provisions of the Recently Passed Labor Law

Under the freshly approved legislation, annual overtime is also at one hundred and fifty hours, while the standard forty-hour workweek stays unchanged.

The government maintains that the extended shift is elective, only applies to the business sector, and can only be used for up to 37 days each year.

Parliamentary Backing and Resistance

The recent ballot was backed by MPs from the ruling centre-right party, with the moderate party – currently the main opposition – rejecting the bill, while the left-wing group did not vote.

Worker organizations have staged two general strikes demanding the law's repeal this month that halted transportation and services to a stop.

Official Defense and Employee Safeguards

The Labor Minister defended the bill, claiming the reforms align national legislation with current labor-market realities, and accused critics of misleading the citizens.

These regulations will provide workers the choice to take on extra work with the same employer for 40% higher pay, while ensuring they will not be dismissed for declining extra hours.

This complies with European Union labor rules, which cap the mean week to 48 hours including overtime but permit flexibility over 12 months, as stated by the government.

Critical Viewpoints and Union Responses

However, opposition parties have charged the government of weakening workers' rights and "driving the nation back to a labor middle age." They say Greek workers already work longer hours than the majority of EU citizens while receiving lower pay and still "face financial difficulties."

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

Recent Workplace Changes and Financial Context

Last year, Greece enacted a six-day work schedule for specific industries in a attempt to stimulate the economy.

New legislation, which started at the start of the summer, allow employees to labor up to 48 hours in a workweek as instead of 40.

European Work Data and National Financial Indicators

• Across the European Union in the previous year, the highest working weeks were recorded in Greece (39.8 hours), followed by Bulgaria, Poland and Romania.
• The lowest work hours in the bloc is in the Netherlands (32.1), according to Eurostat.
• Starting this year, Greece's official minimum wage was €968 a month, placing it in the lower tier among European nations.
• Unemployment, which had peaked at twenty-eight percent during the economic downturn, was 8.1% in August compared with an European mean of 5.9%, data from the statistical office indicate.
• Greece is recovering since its decade-long debt crisis, which concluded in recent years, but salaries and living standards continue to be among the lowest in the European Union.