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Greece's parliament has approved a hotly debated labor reform that enables extended-length work shifts, despite widespread resistance and countrywide strike actions.

Government officials asserted the law will modernize the country's work laws, but critics from the progressive party labeled it as a "harmful law."

Main Elements of the New Labor Law

According to the newly enacted law, yearly extra hours is also at one hundred and fifty hours, while the standard forty-hour workweek continues as before.

The government insists that the longer shift is elective, only applies to the business sector, and can only be used for up to thirty-seven days each year.

Parliamentary Backing and Opposition

The recent vote was supported by MPs from the ruling centre-right political group, with the centre-left party – now the primary opposition – rejecting the bill, while the progressive group did not vote.

Worker organizations have organized multiple protests calling for the law's repeal this month that halted transportation and services to a stop.

Government Defense and Employee Safeguards

The Labor Minister supported the bill, saying the changes align national laws with modern labor-market conditions, and alleged critics of misleading the public.

These regulations will provide workers the option to accept additional hours with the same employer for increased pay, while guaranteeing they cannot be dismissed for declining overtime.

This complies with European Union labor rules, which cap the mean week to 48 hours counting overtime but allow adjustments over a year, according to the administration.

Opposition Perspectives and Labor Responses

However, critics have accused the government of weakening workers' rights and "driving the nation back to a labor middle age." They say Greek employees currently put in more time than most Europeans while receiving lower pay and still "face financial difficulties."

The public-sector union said flexible working hours in practice mean "the end of the eight-hour day, the destruction of personal time and the authorization of excessive labor."

Recent Labor Changes and Financial Context

In 2024, Greece introduced a six-day work schedule for specific industries in a bid to stimulate economic growth.

Recent laws, which started at the start of the summer, allow workers to labor up to 48 hours in a week as instead of 40.

EU Labor Data and Greek Financial Metrics

• Throughout the EU in the previous year, the longest working weeks were recorded in the Hellenic Republic, followed by Bulgaria, Poland (38.9) and Romania (38.8).
• The lowest working week in the bloc is in the Netherlands (32.1), as per Eurostat.
• As of this year, the nation's national minimum wage was nine hundred sixty-eight euros a month, placing it in the lower tier among European nations.
• Unemployment, which had reached a high at twenty-eight percent during the financial crisis, was 8.1% in August compared with an EU average of five point nine percent, figures from the statistical office show.
• The country is improving since its decade-long financial troubles, which ended in recent years, but salaries and quality of life continue to be among the poorest in the EU.