Up to 115% more money

Greece introduces six-day week

Worker in an olive factory

(Bild: AFP/AFP )

From July 1, employers in Greece will be able to offer their employees the option of working six days a week instead of five. The offer could be worthwhile for employees: For the sixth working day, they will receive a 40 percent pay increase; if it involves Sundays and public holidays, there will be a 115 percent increase. 

Trade unions criticize the law as exploitation despite the planned additional payments, but Labour Minister Adonis Georgiadis is not deterred: "As there is a great shortage of workers, especially in industry, overtime is being worked - and it is often paid in the black," he argued during the debate on the law in parliament. The new regulation, on the other hand, would give everyone the right to extra paid work and put a stop to undeclared work.

Skills shortage after the financial crisis
The shortage of skilled workers in Greece is primarily due to the country's severe financial crisis from 2010 to 2018. At that time, the country was on the verge of bankruptcy and hundreds of thousands of well-educated young people emigrated to seek their fortune abroad. Greece has still not recovered from this brain drain, even though the economy is on the up.

Despite a current unemployment rate of around eleven percent, the shortage of workers not only affects industrial companies and the IT sector, but also agriculture and tourism in particular. 

The new law on the six-day week, on the other hand, is aimed at companies that have to maintain operations twelve or even 24 hours a day, seven days a week - such as industrial companies, but also telecommunications companies and other service providers. The public sector and state-owned companies are also part of the target group.

 Greeks work the most hours per week in the EU
The myth that Greeks are lazy workers, which was propagated by numerous international media outlets during the financial crisis, especially in Germany, has once again been disproved. According to the statistics authority Eurostat, the Greeks lead the European rankings for weekly working hours with 39.8 hours (Germany: 34 hours). However, 48 hours per week is said to be the maximum.