https://www.dw.com/en/greece-introduces-the-six-day-work-week/a-69439050
From the construction industry to the tourism sector, Greek employers cannot find the staff they need. The government's solution: longer working hours. A new law enables employers to implement a six-day work week
Usually when there’s a labor shortage wages go up. This sounds like there’s no labor shortage, just a bunch of people eager to extract additional value for free.
It is also what you get when people vote left, and the reaction of the rest of the EU is to punish the whole country by imposing upon them even worse creditor conditions, lest people in other countries get funny ideas and a Conservative government gets put in check. Greeks have turned into this direction because the alternative got shot dead, and the people who had hope for it no longer have any.
The Central European Bank is governed by the EU. During their debt restructuring negotiations from around a decade ago, Greece's government negotiated with the other EU governments, not with private banks.
On paper yes. In reality it's governed by the largest banks. Which also have undue influence over national governments.
I was really confused because last I heard, Greece had a preposterously high unemployment rate. Assuming this data I randomly pulled off of Google is correct, unemployment has been dropping like a rock from its peak: https://tradingeconomics.com/greece/unemployment-rate
However! It's still above 10%, which in the United States at least would be considered devastatingly high. Sounds like yet another case of "nobody wants to work!"
Holy crap it was 28% about a decade ago.
I'd be willing to bet this genius maneuver drives it back up.
Yeah, looking more closely at that graph, I'm noticing it starts in 2009, when Greece had The Crisis: sovereign debt soared thanks to the housing bubble collapse, and people taking a closer look at the actual books of the Greek state. Austerity measures are what led to the massive unemployment spike, and this 6-day work week is another version of austerity.
Austerity doesn't work. This graph couldn't be clearer about that fact.
It's more probable that in reality there are a of people working without the state knowing about it. Much tourism related work is traditionally paid "under the table" in cash, by the day or by the week.
This kind of stuff is trivial for the IRS to find if they wanted to. Just crosscheck revenue, purchases and wage costs and such. And when stuff is off balance, audit. Here in the Netherlands they even look at how much mayonaise and water a restaurant uses to estimate revenue. Same as number of cans of hair product for hairdressers.
And if a company is found at fault they force them to switch to predominantly taking card payments instead of cash to make it even more transparent for the IRS.
Apparently they also estimate people's net worth by looking at registered cars, real estate and the length of you yaght.. and this is pretty accurate to determine if an audit is in order.
All conservatives hear is:
unemployment has been dropping like a rock from its peak
That's all it takes for them to think, "wow, they're doing a great job!" Even when austerity measures mean they can't feed their families. It seems like it's true no matter where you go in the world.
That’s all it takes for them to think, “wow, they’re doing a great job!” Even when austerity measures mean they can’t feed their families.
Conservatives think that is doing a great job. Their economic Platonic ideal is serfdom.
Coming soon to the U.S., we need the seven-day work week to outcompete our foreign rivals. Don't you want to be rich? It will trickle down. No that is not Reagan's ghost laughing out loud at how gullible his constituents are, why do you think that?
What's actually fucked is that this kind of move only brings above board practices that have already been happening in the down low for large sectors of the economy.
The "Greek recovery" is being built on cheap labour, without any kind of productivity gains, technology development, or real diversification of the economy.
Won't stuff like this just cause competent work force to bleed outside Greece and make the problem worse, or is this just for the uneducated low level employees who are easily replaced and have no choice?
