This is the country that instead of reducing its work week, increased it: it will be six days and 48 hours

LWorkers in certain private companies in Greece may be required to work six days and 48 hours a week if your employer requires it, according to a new law that came into effect on Monday.

Employers of businesses that operate 24 hours a day throughout the week, such as factories and other types of industries, They will have the right to impose a sixth working day and 48 hours of work per week on their workers if necessary.

Employees will receive an additional 40% on the daily wage for those eight extra hours, While if that sixth day is a Sunday or holiday, the increase rises to 115%.

The law will make the six-day work week commonplace, also taking into account the almost non-existent labour inspections.

The extended work week can also be imposed in those companies that operate 24 hours a day for only five or six days a week, The law, passed last September by the conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, specifies.

Although in this case the measure can be applied only in “exceptional” periods of increased workload, both unions and the left-wing opposition argue that, in practice, The law will make the six-day work week “common”, taking into account, according to the complaints, the almost non-existent labour inspections.

The labour law change was approved by Mitsotakis’ conservative New Democracy (ND) party, prompting a barrage of criticism from the opposition and a wave of strikes and protests by unions.

According to the then Minister of Labor, Adonis Georgiadis, the law comes to put “order” in what he called the “jungle” of the Greek labor market, where Most employees were already working more than 40 hours a week through undeclared overtime.

According to the Executive, the measure is intended to cover an “exceptional condition”, since in specific periods there is a lack of supply of specialized workers in certain sectors that must be covered in some way.

Offering six-day-a-week contracts was previously an option only open to a few sectors, such as catering and tourism.