The Germans want to imitate… Mitsotakis: "We should also introduce a 6-day working week – in Greece it was done without any protests"

The six-day workweek that will be introduced in Greece on July 1 seems to have aroused genuine interest among employers in Germany. After all, this country is also experiencing a serious problem with a shortage of specialists. At the same time, the Germans, unlike the Greeks, are not at all willing to work overtime.

After German news network RDS advised “take lessons from the Greeks” having given ““Due to the Greek government for the 6-day work week”the financial newspaper Handelsblatt has picked up the baton. It is not the first time that it has spoken positively about the introduction of the six-day working week. Now it is back with an extensive analysis entitled “Why the Greeks achieved what seemed impossible in Germany.”

“The country that the Germans, led by numerous tabloids, called a country of parasites ten years ago is now leading the debate on working hours. The conservative government in Athens has allowed employers to introduce a six-day week,” notes Handsblatt. And reminds that “From July 1, they will be able to offer their employees the option of working six days a week instead of the five that were in effect previously. This will allow Greeks to work longer in the future than they already do: they have the longest working week in EU“.

Handsblatt reports that “There was no big storm of protests in Greece” regarding the introduction of a 6-day work week. The newspaper explains the anemic reaction by the fact that “The shortage of skilled labor is causing the country a lot of trouble.”

Unlike Greece, a six-day week in Germany cannot simply be a government decision. According to an analysis by the financial newspaper, the reasons for the current labor shortage can be found in the economic crisis of 2010-2018. “At that time, the country was on the verge of bankruptcy, and hundreds of thousands of educated young people emigrated to seek their fortunes abroad. Greece has still not recovered from this drain of human potential, although the country's economy is on the rise,” noted in the Handelsblatt article.

Greek workers work almost 650 hours more per year per capita than Germans. Greece leads the European rankings for the length of the working week – 39.8 hours, while Germans work 34 hours a week, the newspaper recalls. According to Handelsblatt, “Everyone who has been working in Greece for a sixth day a week since the summer has done so voluntarily. There is no coercion here.”

With a hint of bitterness, the paper acknowledges that workers in Germany are less willing to work 48 hours a week because unions have more bargaining power: “While economists and employers agree that the number of working hours per capita should be increased, collective agreements and social events are moving in the opposite direction. Here, workers exploit the shortage of skilled labor to negotiate higher wages or more free time.”

Besides trade unions, Germans have another an important feature: their salary allows them to live normally, not just surviveunlike the Greeks, who are simply forced to work hard just to survive.

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