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Government Building

The Greek parliament has given the green light a hotly debated work legislation that enables 13-hour work shifts, despite widespread opposition and countrywide strike actions.

The administration claimed the law will modernize the country's labor regulations, but opposition figures from the progressive faction described it as a "regulatory disaster."

Key Elements of the Recently Passed Work Legislation

According to the newly enacted legislation, annual overtime is also at one hundred and fifty hours, while the standard 40-hour workweek continues as before.

The government insists that the extended workday is elective, only applies to the business sector, and can exclusively be applied for up to thirty-seven days each year.

Parliamentary Backing and Opposition

Thursday's vote was backed by MPs from the ruling centre-right party, with the centre-left party – currently the main opposition – rejecting the bill, while the progressive group did not vote.

Worker organizations have staged multiple protests demanding the bill's withdrawal recently that halted public transport and services to a standstill.

Official Justification and Worker Protections

A senior official defended the legislation, saying the changes align Greek legislation with current labor-market realities, and alleged critics of misinforming the citizens.

These regulations will provide employees the choice to take on extra work with the current company for 40% higher pay, while ensuring they cannot be dismissed for declining overtime.

The measure follows European Union working-time regulations, which cap the mean workweek to 48 hours including extra hours but allow adjustments over a year, according to the government.

Critical Viewpoints and Union Responses

But, critics have charged the administration of weakening employee protections and "pushing the country back to a medieval work era." They argue Greek workers currently put in more time than the majority of EU citizens while receiving lower pay and still "face financial difficulties."

The public-sector union said flexible working hours in reality mean "the end of the standard workday, the destruction of family and social life and the authorization of over-exploitation."

Recent Labor Changes and Economic Context

In 2024, Greece introduced a six-day work schedule for specific industries in a bid to boost the economy.

Recent legislation, which started at the start of the summer, allow employees to labor up to 48 hours in a week as instead of forty.

EU Work Statistics and National Financial Indicators

• Throughout the EU in the previous year, the highest average hours were recorded in Greece (39.8 hours), then Bulgaria, Poland and Romania (38.8).
• The lowest work hours in the bloc is in the Netherlands (32.1), as per EU statistics.
• As of January 2025, Greece's national base pay stood at €968 a month, placing it in the lower tier among EU countries.
• Joblessness, which had peaked at twenty-eight percent during the economic downturn, was 8.1% in the summer compared with an European mean of five point nine percent, data from Eurostat show.
• Greece is recovering since its decade-long debt crisis, which ended in 2018, but salaries and living standards remain among the lowest in the European Union.