Episode 35: expanding working hours

00:00:01: Work makes up a large part of our lives.

00:00:04: Many people define themselves through their work.

00:00:07: Work provides us with money, can be a means of self-fulfillment, or it is simply a necessity to feed ourselves or our families.

00:00:17: Almost everywhere, work and wages are regulated by the hours we work.

00:00:23: When someone challenges these traditions, it has the potential to cause an uproar.

00:00:28: Political camps are at odds with each other.

00:00:31: and trends are emerging within EU countries.

00:00:34: While Scandinavia is also prioritising well-being and work-life balance, other countries are mainly focusing on issues such as demographic change, brain drain and acute skills shortages.

00:00:48: Reducing working hours seems to be an elusive aspiration in these countries.

00:00:53: The opposite is being called for.

00:00:56: Hello and welcome to WeWork Europe.

00:01:00: This is episode one of a three-part series about models for working hours in the European Union.

00:01:14: We work Europe, the podcast of the European Centre for Workers' Questions.

00:01:32: There are some enterprises that they work six or seven days a week, on a twenty-four-hour basis.

00:01:39: So there was a problem with the shifts, so they needed to have this extra work.

00:01:45: This is Konstantinos Karakounis, He is Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Security in Greece.

00:01:52: There was a need, especially from the industry, that's why we drafted such a law.

00:01:59: That law, known as Law five-oh-five-three, and passed in twenty-twenty-three, became notorious.

00:02:06: For the first time in many decades, it permits employers to increase their employees working hours from five to six days a week, at the same time.

00:02:17: affected workers have to give their consent in advance if they are working the sixth day.

00:02:22: For Karakounis and the industry, this is a win-win situation.

00:02:27: Greece has been facing a shortage of skilled workers for years.

00:02:31: Maintaining production chains is becoming increasingly difficult.

00:02:35: As you know, we have not only Greece, but all the European countries have a huge demographic problem.

00:02:45: So the main challenge of course is to find workers, more workers for our economy because our economy is developing these last five years in very high numbers.

00:03:03: Since the start of the pandemic, Greece's gross domestic product has risen steadily.

00:03:08: It currently ranks in the middle of that for other EU countries.

00:03:12: However, it is still well below the peak levels, seen shortly before the financial crisis which began in two thousand and eight.

00:03:20: The consequences of that crisis are still visible in the country.

00:03:24: There is a shortage of young people.

00:03:26: The birth rate is very low.

00:03:28: To compensate for this, the government and business are encouraging overtime work with financial incentives.

00:03:35: If you work for an overtime, you have an additional forty percent compensation.

00:03:42: And if this six-day coincides with a Sunday or a public holiday, the premium may be increased up to one hundred and fifteen percent.

00:03:53: However, a few years on, that law had not fixed the labour shortage, so the government has just passed another one in October.

00:04:02: twenty twenty-five called fair work for all.

00:04:06: It is intended to extend working hours even further.

00:04:09: It has already come into force in some sectors.

00:04:12: This makes Greece the first EU country to have a thirteen-hour working day.

00:04:20: Unfortunately, there was no meaningful dialogue between the general confederation of Greece, GSEE and the government.

00:04:30: This is Antonis Karas, president of DAKE, a trade union.

00:04:34: member of the Umbrella Federation, GSEE, and a member of ESA, talking about the twenty-twenty-three law enabling a sixth day of work.

00:04:48: There has not been sufficient consultation.

00:04:50: We asked for a postponement of at least two months.

00:04:53: to submit comprehensive implementations and proposals.

00:04:57: But we were not given specific time.

00:05:00: Law fifty-fifty-three of twenty-twenty-three was approved in the absence of workers, without consultation and without a substantiated documented impact study.

00:05:13: For several years now, the relationship between the government and trade unions in Greece has been difficult.

00:05:20: According to Darkei, There is no real social dialogue.

00:05:24: The most recent illustration of this is the brand new Fair Work for All Law.

00:05:33: Workers have a very negative feeling about it.

00:05:36: They feel that their personal life and rights are violated by this measure.

00:05:46: What is presented as making work more flexible is being met with resistance from workers.

00:05:51: More than half of the population are against these new working-time regulations.

00:05:56: They don't want to work extra hours, even though they might need to to cover their costs, since regular wages are far too low in Greece.

00:06:04: This is suggested by a survey conducted by the Greek Labour Institute.

00:06:11: According to the survey, Greeks already work an average of forty-five hours per week, which puts the country in first place compared with EU peers in terms of hours worked.

00:06:22: Greek workers are concerned that they will effectively become on-call workers.

00:06:27: If an employer declares an emergency, they will have no choice but to work overtime.

00:06:32: This concern led to a general strike on the first of October, twenty twenty-five.

00:06:38: Trains, ferries and taxis came to a standstill for twenty-four hours.

00:06:43: Teachers and sailors took to the streets, carrying banners that read, no to slavery, and we are not machines.

00:06:52: The two laws, the one from twenty-twenty-three and the one from twenty-twenty-five, violate the principles of how work should be.

00:07:06: The five-day work week and the eight-hour work day were accomplished forty years ago, following the logic that every worker should be able to work for eight hours, rest for eight hours and have the opportunity to spend eight hours in social engagement or with the family.

00:07:26: Deputy Minister Konstantinos Karagounis insists that the new law represents an opportunity for workers.

00:07:34: There are some provisions from the law that protects the employees.

00:07:39: First of all, you can't work more than forty-eight hours per week.

00:07:44: and you cannot work more than one hundred fifty hours of overtime per year.

00:07:52: One fifty, as you know, is a European law.

00:07:57: The Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Security says that the increase in working hours is in line with EU regulations.

00:08:05: In fact, EU law does not limit daily working hours.

00:08:09: An individual could work up to twenty-four hours a day provided there are breaks and an eleven-hour rest period between shifts.

00:08:18: It is unclear whether this is a loophole in the law or if the EU has deliberately left this option open.

00:08:25: Apart from that, one thing remains unclear.

00:08:29: When are companies permitted to implement the additional hours?

00:08:33: Urgent operational needs are literally cited as the basis for alterations.

00:08:39: But who defines these urgent operational needs?

00:08:43: And is there any possibility that these operational needs can be controlled, limited or redefined to prevent abuse?

00:08:51: After all, overtime is voluntary, right?

00:08:58: We all know that workers are being bullied into working longer, with the fear of dismissal.

00:09:04: And this is why they will eventually accept to working thirteen hours.

00:09:09: This is Antonis Karas again.

00:09:11: He says that some of his members already work thirteen-hour days and have reported problems as a result.

00:09:21: We have approached the labour inspectorate on several occasions due to violations of the new thirteen-hour law and existing one hundred fifty-hour annual overtime work limits.

00:09:31: There have been major labour accidents in heavy industry and in public transport.

00:09:36: In these cases, Daqe was successful.

00:09:39: They contacted the National Labour Inspectorate, which imposed sanctions.

00:09:44: However, not all workers dare to report violations, even if they could count on the support of trade unions such as Dake.

00:09:52: Ironically, detecting violations should not be the responsibility of trade unions.

00:09:57: They should not even occur in the first place.

00:10:00: So, Dake wanted to find a new way to address these problems.

00:10:05: And they came up with a revolutionary idea.

00:10:08: In twenty-twenty-two, a proposal from Daqe became law, the introduction of a digital work card that became obligatory for certain sectors.

00:10:18: At first it was the banking sector and supermarkets, then insurance companies and recently the tourism sector.

00:10:26: This card is intended to ensure greater transparency and make it more difficult for employers to violate working-hour agreements.

00:10:34: Around two million workers in Greece are already covered by it.

00:10:38: Konstantinos Karakounis says that this number is set to increase in the coming years.

00:10:49: It is an innovation that Greece has and I think we're getting a lot of credits from the European Commission.

00:10:58: The system operates through check-ins and check-outs.

00:11:02: This enables working hours to be tracked.

00:11:05: In the case of voluntary overtime, the employer must register this digitally in advance.

00:11:11: Data from all companies using the work card is sent to a central office, where it is possible to check in real time who is working, when and for how long.

00:11:21: Inspectors also carry out random workplace checks, not just one or two per year, but there have been eighty thousand spot checks in total every year since the card has been introduced.

00:11:34: This is how it works.

00:11:35: The issue is that you declare that you're going to work from eight to four.

00:11:40: So if the checkings will find you like at five o'clock, he has to see if you have already applied for an overtime working.

00:11:49: If you haven't applied and you're there, you have a fine which is very huge fines for every worker.

00:11:55: It's like more than one thousand euros.

00:11:59: However, according to Daqe, there are still violations.

00:12:03: Also, the digital work card has not been applied in all sectors yet, which allows further violations to sneak through.

00:12:12: It therefore remains to be seen whether the new working hours law will benefit workers or employers, and whether the extra hours worked will alleviate Greece's labour shortage in the medium term.

00:12:24: Greece is not the only country facing this problem.

00:12:28: In the next episode, we will turn our attention to Western Europe, to see how governments and companies are tackling labour shortages.

00:12:40: As an employer, I can only respond to social changes and to society as it is and ask myself, how can I inspire as many people as possible to work for my company?

00:12:54: compared employees with reduced working hours to employees that still work the standard schedule of five days and we actually saw in the tracking data that employees with a four-day workweek had lower stress levels.

00:13:09: Next up on WeWork Europe.

00:13:12: If you like WeWork Europe, do give us a five-star rating and don't forget to subscribe.

00:13:18: Also, If you have any interesting topics or feedback for us, just contact isa.org.

00:13:25: WeWorkEurope is the podcast from Isa, the European Centre for Worker's Questions, which receives financial support from the European Union.

00:13:35: This podcast was narrated by me, Rebecca Sharpe, script and production by Escucha, Audio Identity.