Greece introduces 'growth-oriented' six-day working week
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I know for myself that every day I do approximately 1/5th of the total amount of productive work I can do in a week while remaining happy and willing. If my work week were to be increased to 6 days, that amount would decrease to 1/6th, and the total amount of productive work that I can do in a week would very definitely not be going up, in fact I suspect it would be going down because of less unburdened time* for myself.
Here in Belgium, there's also hard upper limits to what you can earn depending on education, and job title. And since I am already making that limit, there is absolutely no chance that I will put in any more effort than the bare minimum to remain at this level.
*: I define unburdened here as time where I am not doing actual productive work, and I'm not doing busywork to fill the hours either. In other words, when I'm at home.
However the legislation described in the article seems to be about partially lifting a restriction that bans companies and workers on voluntarily agreeing what their weekly working hours should be.
At one extreme, there's quite a few jobs that mostly just require a warm body to be present. I see no reason to override people's own judgement on how many hours they think it's good to work, just like I see no reason to override your judgement.
> Here in Belgium, there's also hard upper limits to what you can earn depending on education, and job title. And since I am already making that limit, there is absolutely no chance that I will put in any more effort than the bare minimum to remain at this level.
Is that a social convention, or anything enforced by law?
Also from the article:
> “It knows that the majority of Greeks, on an average monthly salary of €900, can only survive until the 20th of the month. This latest barbaric measure is not going to solve the fundamental problem of labour shortages and a lot of us feel it is very unfair to unemployed young Greeks who may never have a job.”
This sounds like the same sort of fallacy that gives us the common lament of 'the foreigners are stealing our jobs.'
You seem not to be fluent in greek employer
The ability to end a commercial relationship is an important tool for both sides. It's called voting with your feet. Also very important in politics. I voted with my feet to leave the country I grew up in, for example.
That other direction only works when the jobs market is in your favor.
See https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/GRC/gre... for some recent progress.
Of course, EU membership ought to help a lot: Greeks at least have the legal right to just rock up in the Netherlands and look for a job there.
EDIT: https://tradingeconomics.com/greece/unemployment-rate seems to have some more recent data.
All the reforms forced on Greece seem to be having an impact on the unemployment rate. Of course, no one talks about that.
How much of that effect is people leaving the workforce through emigration?
One number never explains anything.
You seem to share the believe that there is a fixed number of jobs in the economy?
If you live in CA in the us there are hourly jobs and salary jobs. Not all salary jobs are the same. Some of them have "exempt" status. If you make less than (70k a year I think) and work more than 40 hours a week they have to pay you over time.
SO your a Jr programer at a game studio and they want to work you 100 hours a week. Well if you make 100k a year tough for you on over time.
By that same token I can negotiate a stupid high salary as "top talent" in tech. Regardless of what my title or qualifications are.
Most of the giant companies in the Vally got to their scale on the backs of a lot of late nights by a lot of people.
>> I know for myself that every day I do approximately 1/5th of the total amount of productive work I can do in a week while remaining happy and willing.
The answer to this is money. Not another 10k a year, rather the long bet of stock options. It isn't a bet you're making alone either. I can call up people from some of my more early 2000s start up days and they will move mountains if I ask them to. Because we survived those late nights the is a strange bond... The pay off isn't a bit of money or "FIRE" money, it's "fuck you money", it can be stupid!!! Lots of those types (the ones who won the stock options lottery) are still here working (and more than 40 hours a week) because they love the thrill (it's addicting).
Now look at China, pushed the same way. Its tech culture is 996. 9am to 9pm 6 days a week. It also is the home of "lying flat" ... so it is trying BOTH directions.
In the case of Greece, productivity per worker is appalling low... They not only need more jobs in general they also need more work out of the same folks. Does removing the cap make running a salary startup that is US style expectations viable? IDFK but it would be a step towards that.
IM going to guess that CA, Hacker news resident has you leaning left and affluent. Maybe even a (fellow) Bay Area resident.
Lets look a the bay. The tech boom. The bay is covered from Marin to San Jose with money. Tech, Film (Skywalker, Pixar), Wine.
That's the gentrified, affluent, peak Bay Area... Outside this one window the Bay Area has a long storied history of being grimy and hard.
WWI and WWII ... Spanish flu, a public safety officer shot a man for not wearing a mask. WWII had the Bay Area as a pretty bawdy town. It stayed that way, one of the OG strip joins was (is?) in the Bay Area. Look at the 50's and 60's Hells Angels, Black Panthers (the armed edition), Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army, The Altimont Speed Way murder (concert). Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. Bill Graham has a venue named after him, but the murder around him getting his start is suspect... You get some "fun" fringe thinkers. The Grateful Dead (you don't have to like them) became a roving acid distribution system every summer (wall of sound, Owlsy acid). Burning man is latter day hippies (more gen X than anything else) who wanted to carry on that spirt and optimism. Neither of these groups are "bad" but they aren't the current afluent Bay Area set for sure.
All of this is to say that one should not be surprised when "bipping" is a very Bay Area thing to have happen to you, when you see the current "crime" in the Bay Area. You have affluence next to the people who are down trodden, defeated or simply who do not care, who are acting out against the system!
In china all the things that happen in the bay would get squashed. Lying Flat (doing the bare minimum) is their version of rebellion. Their 996 set is our tech scene (was, that's shifted somewhat now). The labels, the reactions, are different, are local... but the motivations and the underlying causes are NOT... Those who have a path and those who do not and the gulf between.
Very curious given that our current calendar weeks are completely arbitrary. How do you explain such a coincidence?
If for historical reasons we today happened to have eight day weeks with six workdays how much work would you deliver every day compared to your baseline of a seven day load? I would guess (1/6)*(8/7).
Jokes aside, the fact that you won't deliver more results if working longer most likely reflects problems in the way your work is set. Capitalists who seek longer weeks normally make sure it's not the case in their organizations. The reason why we now mostly enjoy reduced hours is not the increased productivity per year (which is not true in general) but a belief that healthier citizens will put in more years of work while straining the healthcare system less. So an attempt to prioritize long-term interests while knowingly damaging the short-term.
I'm sure this reform will make them come right back!
More discussion:
Yeah instead of raising the minimum wage, capping CEO profit and benefits, taxing the rich more, let the peasants "earn" their bread.
F--k a government this bad.
Stay tuned!