Greece introduces the six-day work week

[OnlinePoker]

After 15 years of recession and austerity and three rescue packages that came with tough conditions attached, labor in Greece is no longer strictly regulated.

Collective agreements have been frozen for years, and in many businesses, staff work on the basis of individual employment contracts.

While the 40-hour work week is still officially in place, employers are permitted to require staff to work up to two unpaid hours per day for a limited period in return for more free time.

In theory, this additional work is voluntary. In reality, however, workers in many businesses and workplaces are forced to work longer hours without receiving any form of compensation.

https://www.dw.com/en/greece-introduces-the-six-day-work-week/a-69439050

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How dare you want something in life other than to make us richer.

[marble falls]

1. Someone has got to pay for businesses excesses. Why not the powerless and voiceless. They've turned unions into ...

... fraternal organizations.

[Diamond_Dog]

2. Longer hours - less pay

A conservative CEO dream come true.

[Coventina]

3. Make no mistake: The Corporate Overlords want this here as well. n/t

[jaxexpat]

5. Temps are, now, permanent.

[GiqueCee]

6. Feudalism 2.0...

... is what the corporatists want. Their capacity for evil greed has no boundaries. They'd turn out their toddlers for a profit. Imagine what they'd do to yours.
Corporatism is what will destroy America.

*Interesting side note: "Corporatism" is what Mussolini preferred to call his form of government.

[c-rational]

4. I had felt bad for the Greeks during the finalciall crisis and how the EU forced austerity on them

to the detriment of society as a whole and the resulting sale of national assets. Fifteen years later and now a 6-day work week.

I feel more and more this boils down to the haves vs. the have-nots in a rigged game where we the masses are brainwashed into voting against their interests. We need a no fear reckoning. Time to figuratively rip the heart out of the monter of unregulated capitalixm. I say simply bring badk the 90% tax rate for all income over 100MM.

[twodogsbarking]

7. The beatings will continue until morale improves.

[hay rick]

8. Compensation is increasingly disassociated from productive value created by workers.

Instead, compensation is more closely related to power in the workplace. Much of the rearrangement of shares of income and wealth should be understood as looting and reined in accordingly. The "earnings" of the 1% have no significant personal value to these people and the excess profits are really just a way of keeping score in a game devoid of humanity.

[Old Crank]

9. This is not good.

They are loosing the young becasue they can make more money elsewhere in the EU. On Crete, the interior still is a lot like the mid 70s while the coast is dominated by tourist industy stuff.

The people are great but you can only lose so many people before they place dies.

[msongs]

10. not to worry, fleeing people will be replaced by immigrants nt

[Old Crank]

13. That seems to be true to some extent.

But the immigration is fueling the right here in Europe. And immigrants can't vote. Plus that jyst hollows out the country they left.

[Xolodno]

11. Austerity implementers aren't thinking for the modern world.

They assumed the populace was captive and would stay put. But part of being in the EU allows you to move about to other nations for work.

Next gut punch will be when employers start leaving as they will not be able to attract the employee's they need.

Austerity may pay off the bills, but implemented too harshly, you could do some serious long term economic damage.

[DFW]

12. Greece had no business joining the Euro.

That was done with cooked books, and only helped out companies and other Eurozone nations trying to sell there. Greece had a completely impractical economic system, including a bloated bureaucracy and retirement at 55 for government workers with generous pensions. It was a socialist paradise built on the Utopian fiction that "the people" got everything they wanted from the government. It was all built on a fiction. The money used to "pay" for all this was the ever-devaluing drachma. If you keep devaluing your currency, or course, you can always offer more money as a government--just keep printing more of it. The tourist trade and export-based agriculture did just fine, because they took in Marks, Pounds, Swiss Francs, French Francs and Dollars. The tourists got ever more drachmae for their currency, and the Greek government never ran out of drachmae to hand out to the population.

All that changed when the Greeks joined the Euro. Now, the Greek central bank had no more control over their little devaluation scheme. The Euro was controlled by the European Central Bank, and the Greek government couldn't print all the euros they wanted to cover all their promises any more. No more 25% inflation to cover their money-printing tactic. No wonder they went broke in no time flat, and had to institute austerity measures. They could no longer pretend that the money they were handing out was really there. They couldn't print euros, only the ECB could do that. Portugal, Italy and Spain got their houses in order before joining the euro. Greece thought it would somehow get away with not doing that. Oops. Now they are stuck with explaining to their people why the old way of doing things doesn't work any more, and they are going to cope with economic reality. That's new, and the people aren't going to like it. When tourists come from Germany, their euro is now worth the same as it was last year: a euro. No more 25% increase in local buying power due to devaluation. Greece still hasn't adjusted to the new reality completely. They will in time, or else they'll have to abandon the Euro, which I don't think they will. The EU has been generous with handouts to members that have never been solid economically. In Spain and Portugal, 20 to 30 years ago, the people used to point to new highways and airports, and proudly say, "all paid for by the EU!" Countries like Germany and France used to grumble at financing all this national welfare, and Britain even used this as propaganda for the Brexit movement, which was (unfortunately successfully) used as propaganda to sway the vote to leave. Germany, France and Great Britain may be better off financially, but their taxpayers get hit in the gut with all the things they are asked to cover. They are OK with paying for some things, especially those that affect them at home (health, education, unemployment, etc.). But when it comes to paying for highways in Portugal and government pensions in Greece (at age 55, no less!), the point is reached, sooner or later, when that goes too far. If this continues, Putin will have it easy getting the larger countries of the EU to say, "what's the point?"