Just when it was thought that the neoliberal dystopia created in Greece since the outbreak of the debt crisis could not get any worse, the current right-wing government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has replaced the five-day work week with a six-day week and flexible working hours. This controversial new law will come into effect on July 1, with the Greeks having accepted it without much resistance.
The six-day working week applies to both the public and private sectors. Specifically, the new Labour Law concerns companies, organisations and continuously operating companies that currently use the five-day working week model and allows employers to force their employees to work six days a week. The additional working day will be paid at 40% of the daily wage.
As a typical example of neoliberal transformation, Greece is the first country in Europe to introduce the six-day working week, at a time when other European countries have already adopted or tested it. with extremely positive resultsa four-day work week system.
What is even more ironic about the new labor law is that Greeks already work the most. the longest hours in Europe (while earning lower wages than at the start of the country's financial crisis), while labor productivity, defined as real gross domestic product per hour worked, is around 61 percent of the European Union average and 55 percent of the eurozone average. In fact, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Economic Outlook, labor productivity has actually declined in recent yearsrevealing the moribund state of the existing economic model in Greece.
The new labor law, approved last September by a conservative-dominated parliament, was reportedly designed to end the shortage of skilled labor. This is gibberish, because virtually all of Europe appears to be facing a shortage of skilled labor. 75 percent Employers in 21 European countries reported difficulties in finding workers with the right skills in 2023, while 82 percent German employers have reported difficulty finding qualified candidates for positions open in 2024. Yet only the Greek right seems to believe that moving from a five-day to a six-day workweek is the way to address the shortage of skilled workers. Moreover, they are indifferent to the concerns of citizens around the world who are demanding a better work-life balance, and ignore the available empirical evidence that a shortened workweek leads to a increased employee productivity and business performance.
This shift is driven by a deep desire of neoliberals and the national capitalist elite to further degrade the position of workers and maximize the exploitation of labor. It is true that international creditors (the so-called troika The European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had recommended at the height of the debt crisis that Greece adopt a six-day work week, but the new labor law is the work of former labor minister and current health minister Adonis Georgiadis, whose long and storied history of anti-Semitism and far-right political involvement is well documented. Georgiadis, who is also vice-president of the right-wing New Democracy party, has in fact publicly stated that workers have the right to work 16 hours a day.
In practice, the new labor law may well embody this ultra-reactionary vision of the future of workers and work in Greece. It allows workers to work eight hours a day in two different establishments and includes a series of extremely flexible agreements between employers and employees, such as one allowing the former to offer new workers a six-month trial period and to fire them without compensation for the first year. Employers can also call an employee back to work on his or her day off by giving him or her 24 hours' notice.
In another era, such reactionary measures would have at least provoked massive waves of public anger and protest. Konstantinos Mitsotakis, the father of the current Greek Prime Minister and a Thatcherite supporter, managed to stay in power for only three short years (1990-1993) thanks to massive opposition from trade unions, socialists and communists to his ambitious plan for structural reforms of the Greek economy, based on policies of deregulation, market liberalization and savage privatizations of all public sector enterprises and social services. Even members of his own party, New Democracy, opposed his radical privatization plans.
Unfortunately, today the social reorganization in Greece is so deep and profound that public suffering for the sake of private gain has become the new norm, as many years of brutal neoliberal capitalism combined with the betrayal of the left have resulted in a condition of political demoralization among citizens that makes it difficult to see how the country can emerge from its current neoliberal nightmare.
Greece may be the first country in Europe to introduce a six-day work week, but employees at many companies in China already work six days a week and one number of companies in the United States They also plan to impose a six-day work week in 2025. There is no doubt that the erosion of labor rights and increased exploitation of workers is easier to achieve under conditions where unions are weakened and the anti-capitalist left is weak or non-existent, as both are essential to effectively challenging the irrational and inhumane project of neoliberal capitalism.
From debt crisis to neoliberal dystopia
During the infamous bailouts that took place between 2010 and 2015 following the outbreak of the Greek debt crisis in late 2009, the small country in south-eastern Europe was transformed by the troika into a neoliberal laboratory.
Press on The myth of Greek debaucheryThe Troika implemented a ruthless neoliberal policy agenda that included massive budget cuts in health care and education; major wage adjustments, with private sector wages falling even faster and lower (by more than 23 percent) than in the public sector; pension reforms (pensions paying more than 2,000 euros per month have been cut by more than 40 percent, while those paying less than 1,000 euros per month have been cut by 14 percent); drastic cuts in social protection systems; massive tax increases; privatization of all state property in the form of fire sale; and draconian labor reforms that essentially demolished the entire collective bargaining system and turned the labor market into a jungle.
The country's main political parties (the social-democratic PASOK party, the conservative New Democracy party and the Coalition of the Radical Left, aka Syriza) took turns governing during the debt crisis, and all three ended up signing bailout deals and, subsequently, agreeing to Greece's transformation into a neoliberal dystopia.
It is quite shocking, but hardly surprising, that very little has changed in substance in Greece since the bailouts. The economy operates on the same flawed model, with tourism and low wages the main drivers of growth. The state (including the judiciary) suffers from the same old pathologies. Corruption and inefficiency (although the use of new technologies in administrative affairs serves to create the illusion that a new era has opened in relations between the state and citizens). Meanwhile, the underground economy continues to flourish, accounting for about a fifth of GDP; the average monthly salary is 1.5%. 20 percent less than 15 years agounemployment is still above 10%, the second highest in the EU; and the debt-to-GDP ratio is much higher today than it was before the crisis. In fact, all the bailout deals have achieved in addressing the supposedly unsustainable debt-to-GDP ratio at the end of 2009 is to increase it. In 2009, the public debt-to-GDP ratio stood at 115.1 percent. At the end of the fourth quarter of 2023, it was at 161.9 percent although it is expected to start decreasing from 2024 to 2029 and Greece is now repay previous loans of the first rescue plan.
The sadistic neoliberal measures introduced by the Troika and implemented in turn by the country’s three main political parties have left Greece unable to pursue an alternative economic model. As a result, socio-economic inequalities have widened, democracy has suffered severe blows and citizens seem to have abandoned any hope of meaningful social change after the end of the Cold War. SyrizaThe former US president's rise to power ended in a total fiasco. As evidenced by the Voter turnout historically low In the European elections of recent months, Greeks now seem to feel helpless in the face of the brutal realization that the country's political establishment unequivocally places the interests of the euro countries and the national financial and business elite above those of workers.
