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Government Building

The Greek legislature has ratified a disputed labor reform that permits 13-hour working days, despite fierce opposition and countrywide strike actions.

Government officials asserted the law will modernize Greek labor regulations, but critics from the left-wing faction described it as a "regulatory disaster."

Key Elements of the Recently Passed Labor Law

According to the freshly approved law, yearly overtime is capped at one hundred and fifty hours, while the regular forty-hour workweek remains in place.

Officials maintains that the extended shift is elective, only affects the private sector, and can exclusively be applied for up to 37 days annually.

Parliamentary Support and Opposition

Thursday's vote was supported by MPs from the governing centre-right party, with the centre-left faction – currently the main opposition – rejecting the legislation, while the progressive group abstained.

Labor unions have staged multiple protests demanding the bill's withdrawal recently that halted transportation and services to a stop.

Official Justification and Worker Safeguards

The Labor Minister defended the bill, stating the changes align national laws with current employment conditions, and accused critics of misinforming the public.

These regulations will provide employees the option to take on extra work with the current company for increased compensation, while guaranteeing they will not be fired for declining extra hours.

This follows EU working-time rules, which limit the mean workweek to forty-eight hours including extra hours but allow adjustments over a year, according to the administration.

Critical Perspectives and Labor Reactions

However, critics have charged the administration of weakening employee protections and "pushing the nation back to a labor middle age." They say local workers already work longer hours than the majority of Europeans while receiving lower pay and still "struggle to make ends meet."

A major labor organization said flexible working hours in reality mean "the end of the standard workday, the disruption of personal time and the authorization of over-exploitation."

Recent Labor Changes and Financial Context

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

Recent legislation, which started at the beginning of July, permit employees to labor up to forty-eight hours in a workweek as instead of forty.

EU Work Statistics and National Economic Metrics

• Throughout the European Union in 2024, the longest working weeks were observed in Greece (39.8 hours), followed by Bulgaria, Poland and Romania (38.8).
• The lowest working week in the union is in the Netherlands, according to EU statistics.
• Starting this year, Greece's official 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 versus an European mean of 5.9%, figures from Eurostat show.
• Greece is improving since its prolonged financial troubles, which concluded in 2018, but salaries and living standards continue to be among the poorest in the EU.