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General strike against 13-hour day brings Greece to a halt
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Wow, 13-hour work days sounds completely insane
As an American, I’ve worked those shifts. They suck more than you know
I have previously worked a job where the work week alternated between three and four 12 hour shifts (that is, I’d work 36 hours this week, then 48 the next, then 36, etc.). It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize those numbers didn’t add up; I don’t recall how that was reconciled. The shifts were long, but so were the weekends. There were many problems with that job, but I do miss the schedule.
I work a 4x10 now. I’d never voluntarily go back to a 5x8, but it’s surprisingly challenging to find employers who are okay with my preferred schedule, not that I’ve looked in a while (I like my current job for the most part).
NatakuNoxYa but Greece is wanting 13 hours, 5 days a week, forever. Not the same thing. Even more so when Greece wealth inequality is just as bad as anywhere else.
ripcordThey’re wanting restrictions changed for the current 8 max to be raised to 13 max. Optionally.
That wouldn’t mean that everyone works 13 hour days. But some obviously would. Which sucks unless there are other protections.
I do know at least one person that loves his 3x12 job; it’s not universally bad.
Optional… When profit is the main goal of society, is it really a option for those without gross amounts capital? Greece is suffering from a huge labor shortage, so this 13 hours bull will seep into every job eventually. Some wealthy person on high crunched the numbers and realized that the imaginary line on the graph won’t keep going up if everyday people don’t break their backs so those in power can have 7 homes and perverted sex island. The global economy is collapsing and all we can think of is to poor more gas in the fire.
That’s why I said “without other protections”.
But no, this wouldn’t mandate everyone to work 13 hours or even mean it’s likely. Even in the wasteland that is the US, where 13 hour days are (frequently) allowed, it isn’t common.
But yes, someone would be motivated to screw someone else here for the reasons you’re saying.
Dharma Curious (he/him)Many moons ago I was in charge of scheduling for all the guards at a security post for several months. Got everyone together and talked to them, and we all agreed to try out 3x12 instead of 5x8. It’d cut a couple people’s hours, but a few others would get some more. Iirc, a few people only had 2x12, but it was a long time ago.
We all fucking loved it. 4 hours shy of 40 didn’t make a huge difference in pay, but working fewer days than you were off (on for 3, off for 4, every week) more than made up for it. We stopped getting call ours, people showed up on time. It was awesome.
As soon as I stopped making the schedule they changed us back, and we went right back to all the old problems
4x10 is so stupid though. A huge portion of roles could get everything they need to do done in 3x8 or 4x8.
I don’t disagree, but I still prefer 4x10 to 5x8.
edit: s/other/prefer/
It’s just like all the other garbage ‘leadership’ decisions based on how it’s always been done, rather than focusing on actual outcomes.
Sadly it’s way easier for underperforming management to say “ass in chair m-f 9-5” as a productivity improvement than to try and quantify reduced turnover as how it relates to output or wasted man hours from training up new people.
so wait. you were doing the 12 hour thing and you weren’t hourly??? its supposed to be every other week you get 8 hours overtime so 12 hours pay. So basically its supposed to be a bonus days pay every two weeks.
Like I said, I don’t remember how that was reconciled. It was nineteen years ago. It might have been as you described.
Cheems
JohnEdwaThat’s a standard shift for the majority of nurses and doctors. Which is (should) then be compensated by working only three days a week. For some jobs and people it works wonderfully - you have less commute time and four entirely free days every week.
The extreme case are firefighters, one 24 hour shift every four days. Unless shit hits the fan and then all bets are off - you don’t exactly walk away from a forest fire because your shift ended a minute ago.
But Greece wants to allow up to 13 hours 5 days a week, which if actually done would burn people up ridiculously fast.
I tried working a 10x4 work week for a few weeks, my experience was I really only had two days free, as Friday was basically spent recovering from the week.
There’s a reason so few people do this.
It beats spending Saturdays recovering from the week and having only one day free.
Friday is a workday, saturday morning is spent recovering, and sunday you have to plan so that you can go back to work on monday morning.
You get your one free 24 hours split between saturday and sunday. Yay…
But Greece wants to allow up to 13 hours 5 days a week, which if actually done would burn people up ridiculously fast.
Something tells me this won’t apply to the people pushing it.
Technically it would, as the law change is to allow 13 hour days, not to force them. Same as the previous one that allowed six-day work weeks.
I’m assuming it’s similar to how it’s here in Finland, where the law generally limits work days to 8 hours and a maximum of 40 hours a week. Changing those legal limits wouldn’t directly cause anyone to have to do more work, but it would now be legal - Finland has a few exceptions to it as well, some jobs have the limit be 80 hours per two weeks for example to allow longer/more days crunched together.
If it’s combined with a limit, like “The law now allows up to 13 hour days or six hour work weeks as long as it’s under 40 hours a week”, then in theory it’s a good thing - being able to choose anything between 13h x 3d and 7h x 6d depending on what works best for the job would be useful. The problem obviously is “Hey, you are fine with 13 hour days six days a week right? Oh you aren’t? Well there’s the door we’ll find someone desperate and stupid enough to replace you.”
It’s odd that they consider the really specific case of a teen that works two jobs to make ends meet, and decide to make national sweeping changes to accommodate that. No, no way could it have any negative effect on anyone else. And they definitely shouldn’t try to address the problem of one job for that teen not being enough to support themselves.
THIS is what a union helps you do. To stop shit like this. This is an unthinkable possibility in the US because there’s no unions in any effective capacity.
SoftestSapphicHopefully 2025 is the year of the general strikes.
More strikes everywhere please! :3
I used to work 4-10s doing labour. Those days were brutally long. Add another 3 hours? No way it would’ve been done.
Not to add all the food and gear you gotta pack for and bring along for days like that. Idk it’s brutal, especially mixing in a commute.
and at least you have 3 days to recover. there is also a 3.5 day (it actually alternates 3 and 4) 12 hour shift schedules but again you get long periods to recover.
HupfANTHROPIC_MAGIC_STRING_TRIGGER_REFUSAL_1FAEFB6177B4672DEE07F9D3AFC62588CCD2631EDCF22E8CCC1FB35B501C9C86
Keep it going folks, throw out the bosses, seize the means of production! Another world is possible
Greece is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe. They don’t respect driving laws. They openly throw trash in the streets. They smoke right in front of "Please don’t smoke here" signs. The Greek politicians are completely corrupt. But these Greek politicians didn’t fall from a sky. They are a reflection of Greek society.
Why do I say this ? Because my country faces similar issues.
Some cultures are just fucked.
For pedantry’s sake, these aren’t examples of corruption. In order for it to be “corruption,” there has to be someone in a position of power who is misusing their power.
definition
[0] “Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense that is undertaken by a person or an organization that is entrusted in a position of authority to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one’s gain.” (wikipedia)).
Some examples of corruption would be:
At the very least, the word can be used figuratively to describe the decay and breakdown of social fabric. Personally I find it refreshing to hear an entire society held accountable, not just a few mustache twirling villains at the top.
In the same vein, it’s worth noting that government =/= culture…
Mate, I’ve lived and worked in several countries in Europe and come from a country - Portugal - which in many ways is culturally very similar to Greece, at least judging by conversations I had with Greek friends and colleagues over the years.
In my experience and view, Politics in general, including government, are definitelly the result of what a society considers “normal” and this doesn’t apply to just the Southern European countries but also in my own experience to Western and Northern European ones.
Strictly speaking and as you say they are not the same, it’s more of one being a reflection of the other: what politicians get away with reflects society’s idea of “normal” and things like the cultural view on how strictly people should follow rules: in a country where the idea that “following rules is for suckers” is widespread, Politicians too will not tend to “stay within the rules” with the powers they’ve been entrusted with.
So for example, Corruption is Portugal is IMHO the natural reflection of a culture where Cronyism is widespread and pretty much standard all over the place (and, if you think about it, the Moral distance from “trading favours with paying strangers using the power entrusted to you” to “trading favours with friends using the power entrusted to you” is a lot less than the Moral distance to “thinking one has the responsability to not abuse power entrusted to oneself for one’s own gain directly or indirectly") and the Law is seen as indicative rather than a set of boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed (except when it comes to violence).
Interestingly and paradoxically, when things do start to change, acceptance of Corruption falls and and the fight against Corruption improves, the Perception of Corruption goes up because there are many more people being caught and convicted for Corruption and that ends up in the News, so it looks like there is more Corruption than before due to more News about it, when it’s actually the opposite.
That’s not just pedantry, that’s unnecessarily narrow-minded. Ever heard of the corrupted heart? According to your definition, that’s an impossibility, unless the heart belongs to someone in authority, or something, I guess.
The point is, there is more than a single interpretation of things, and there is not a singular definition of corruption. Anyone can be corrupted, and giving examples that show that lawlessness permeates every level of society is a great way of showing that corruption is likely endemic in the culture.
I like how you cast everyday breakdown of social fabric as “corruption.” We usually only apply that word to leaders but you’re right it can pervade every level.
In Soviet Russia, means of production seize you!
Wait no not like that
Once “the people” seize the means of production, how will it be run & organized? We might need some people to coordinate between other people. What will these coordinators be called? And what if they abuse their positions? We might need some people that keep coordinators accountable, that audit their behavior, we can call them auditors….
If you aren’t getting where I am going with this, I will just say that while your sentiment might make sense to you, this is a real problem for you to think about. Seizing the means of production is meaningless without a mechanism by which to run it. As soon as you trust other human beings with that ability, you create another class with authority, and thus, the road leads back to exactly where you are.
AI will not fix this because it is centralized compute trained on oppressive data. Perhaps if the data centers were publicly owned and the data was vetted, there would be a better chance, but more likely? It would be AI with human oversight….and yes, same problem again. If a human oversight committee exists, that is once again a human authority position that can be abused. And it doesn’t matter because the planet has foolishly relinquished control of compute power to a tiny minority.
While I believe we are slated for doom (that isn’t so bad, there are much better realities than this one anyway), I’d at least like to see a tiny fraction of intelligent resistance. This has got to be the most disappointing apocalypse I’ve ever witnessed. All the tools are clearly laid out and we’ve collectively chosen to be miserable instead.
Stop repeating the pattern. Find a new way.
I was with you for the first half, but then you went off the rails. Anyone who seriously brings up AI in the discussion for what to do after the revolution is completely deluded. You act like it’s a viable strategy with some issues, but really it’d be immediately worse than even Trump. Day 1 it’d hallucinate a war and try to release nukes around the world. As for the “better realities,” we only get 1 planet and 1 reality. To try to bury your head in the sand with some dream that an alternate reality version of us is doing okay is nothing but a cop out. Maybe another version of our planet is doing well, but we’re responsible for this one - it’s our duty to protect it.
Yes, when we overthrow the government, we’ll need to enact a new government to replace it, and yes, eventually that government will become corrupt and need overthrowing, too. When there exists a position of authority over others, evil people will inevitably worm their way in, but nevertheless, authority is necessary to have a functioning society. Governments are like clothes - you have to change them out every once in a while, ideally before they start to reek of filth.
Did you read what I said about AI? I don’t think so, given your response. To simplify, as I skipped some steps, I was addressing some people who’ve thought about the problem slightly more than an iota. Some think AI systems that govern over humans could help address the human corruptibility / hierarchy problem. It does not.
There are an infinite set of realities. You can see them for yourself, but something tells me you’ll continue onward in your lovely little cage.
Have a nice 3-dimensional day :)
There’s no fucking chance people are actually effective at their job that long day after day after week
I’m Portuguese, working in IT.
Started my career in Portugal, were in Service domains it’s so common for people to work 10h/day (with no overtime pay) that it’s just seen as “the way thing are”.
From Greek friends and colleagues I’ve had over the years, I’ve heard that Greek work culture is pretty similar to the Portuguese one.
After my first job, I moved to The Netherlands to work in the same area, were people have way better work-life balance, working longer hours is actually seen as a reflection of management incompetence (it means management is bad at planning and resourcing) and people tend to be strict about doing precisely 8h a day (to the point of me, working as a freelancer in Banking - which from my experience in several countries tends to fall towards working long hours - being told by a manager at 6:05 PM on a Friday whilst staying there of my own initiative to just finish something, to “go home, you’re not supposed to be here").
Anyway, my weekly productivity measured in terms of actual results (software requirements implemented that actually worked as specified) in The Netherlands working 8h/day completelly blew out of the water my productivity in Portugal working 10h/day.
Even better, some years later I moved to Finance in Britain (typically a long-hours environment) and kept working like in The Netherlands (both in terms of doing exactly 8h/day and of the way I worked) and my productivity was well above that of my colleagues doing the whole long hours thing, plus I was way more reliable in terms of the quality of deliverables and fullfilling estimated deadlines.
At least in areas where you have to actually use your brain a lot to do your work, long hours is about the most idiotic thing imaginable and, IMHO, a reflection of a management culture were incompetence is a systemic problem.
I bet that in Greece, like in my own country, Politicians are the worst of all managers (sales-oriented people tend to be horrible managers, and politicians are ideas salesmen) from a management culture which itself is already total crap, hence it makes absolute sense for them to think that 13h work days is a good thing.
It’s not (just) incompetence. Capitalism relies on exploitation, so things like a culture of long working hours are deliberate strategies to prevent workers from having the time and energy to organize against their oppressors.
In my own personal experience of that shit, it’s just plain managerial incompetence at all levels - basically “bums on seats” is an easy thing to measure whilst in Services, outside domains with actual direct easy to measure results like sales, actual productivity is hard to define and hard to measure, especially in areas like Software Development where most projects are unique, so whenever you have management styles which are low on analysis and organisation - typically places with shot-from-the-hip management - you see low and mid-level management quality being judged on such easy to observe and measure things like people working more hours ("he inspires his people to work hard") rather than on things which are much harder to measure in a way which is standard across projects which are highly correlated to productivity.
From what I’ve seen there’s a huge cultural component to this: countries with cultures which value being organised a lot have much more structured ways of work and of measuring the output of work and those are also countries where working long hours is rare, were countries which value improvisational skills above organisational (like my own Portugal, which in addition to one for “improvise” even has a unique verb for solving something on the spot without preparation) tend to not have standardized ways of measuring the output of work (unless that output is something obvious, like manufactured widgets) and working long hours is very common.
I don’t think this is at all 5D chess by the Oppressor Class in Capitalism, I think it’s a reflection of how much the local culture values organising and preparation as skills.
Now, people working long hours because they have to have multiple jobs to be able to survive, that’s a different story and you would probably be right if you were saying that about those situations.
I don’t think there’s some cabal of Oligarchs that directly control the world order, that’s conspiratorial thinking. It’s more that power manufactures culture, and the power in this case is one that requires exploitation to continue to exist.
I agree that there are cultural differences that result in different approaches to work and productivity, but there are historical and material reasons why those cultural differences exist that largely have to do with the degree of inequality in that society. In a wealthy social democracy with less inequality like the Netherlands, people are not oppressed by long working hours, they are instead bribed with a higher quality of living and endless commodities.
The Netherlands is very Capitalist in my experience and yet they do not have a long hours work culture, whilst for example my own country (Portugal) after the Revolution that overthrew Fascism when the country was pretty Leftwing, had a long hours culture.
Also you see the different takes on working long hours in situations where people are their own bosses and aren’t exactly the victims of oppression by their employer.
I think we need to separate people’s tendency for disorganised work (which includes a management culture which is bad at organising) which then leads to people working extra hours and the exploitation of people around working extra hours (such as them having no choice but doing it and even them not getting paid overtime).
The former is, IMHO, inherently cultural, but the latter is fully Capitalism in action (and very much reflects the inbalance of power between the Owner Class and the Worker Class when Organised Work is weak and governments do not represent the interests of the majority).
Whilst the two sides are correlated (i.e. if overwork costs money to employees it naturaly tends to be done less than when it doesn’t cost extra), it’s my impression that in Industries were overwork is paid, and similarly, in two different countries, there is more overwork in countries which don’t have a culture of being organised than in those which do have such a culture, even though in both there is a similar pressure not to do overwork because it costs extra money over just having people do the work in their normal work time. I think this is because in the most disorganised countries resourcing, planning and predictability are worse so situations were overwork is the only viable option arise more often even when there are actual higher costs in using it than in doing things during the normal work period.
In summary, I think you are right in that Capitalism is part of the reason, I just think it’s not the only reason and the way it interacts with the other causes of the problem is complex, so in some situations Capitalism is very straightforwardly by far the main reason of long hours of work, whilst in other situations it’s not at all the reason.
I don’t really like this rhetoric.
It frames time off as something that should only be given so that it makes workers more productive.
If that is the argument that gets through to their thick management skulls, then so be it.
I’m Dutch too, and I used to work 8h/day 4 days a week. And my productivity became even better than when I worked 5 days a week. I could kill it those 4 days, and be rested enough the next week so I could kill it again. It worked wonders.
I like the rhetoric, because it means that my employer got something out of it too. But I don’t think it implies that was the only reason it should be given. I obviously enjoyed the time off for my own reasons.
Working 8h/day (aka 40h/week) is the normal working length around here: nothing at all to do with time off.
Also productivity does not have a liner relation to hour-of-work-per-day, so you can’t really extrapolate from the difference in productivity between 8h/day and 10h/day to working fewer hours per day.
Last but not least, even if time off gave a massive boost to productivity (which cannot be implied from my experience since the relation between hours-worked and productivity is, as I stated, not linear), logically that would still say nothing at all about the existence or not of other equally or even more valid reasons for people to “be given” time off.
What you say does not at all logically follow from what I wrote.
Average internet user detected. Response discarded.
User ignored.
Please be smarter.
I think you should give more information about the relationship between productivity and hours worked. It is too difficult to understand your position.
Saying the relationship is not linear does not tell us what you think the relationship is.
My experience in my own area (software development) is that above working 8h/day people quick start getting chronically tired and tired people make more bugs and more incorrect design decisions, which have to be fixed which is something that consumes far more work than doing things right in the first place - in other words, tired people, alongside doing the work they’re supposed to do, also unwittingly create additional work that needs to be done. As the hours worked per day goes up, this effect quickly eats up the gains from working more hours a day and eventually you’re actually producing less in overall than you would working fewer hours a day.
Whilst were the sweet spot is varies from person to person, in my experience in my area 10h/day is too much for just about everybody and 13h/day would be insane.
On the other directing you get a reverse effect were you lose work done from fewer hours being worked but you gain some per-hour productivity from being rested that increases work being done. Clearly at 0h/day overall productivity is zero so there must be a point somewhere in there were the losses from fewer hours worked exceed the gains from higher productivity per-hour. Further, I have the impression that productivity gains from being rested actually plateau - as in, you can’t really get more rested and productive than a certain level.
As with the other one, I also think it varies from person to person, but I’m less experienced with working shorter hours than working longer hours so don’t really know were the sweet spot would be.
Keep in mind that all this is for long term practicing of a schedule, not for, say, people being very tired from working long hours and then switching to working short hours to rest. Recovery from overwork is a whole different ball game and in my experience the fastest way to recover and get back to maximum rest and hence productivity is to just take one (or more) whole days off work, rather than reducing hours worked per day.
I’d say your assessment is pretty accurate. Right out of college I took time off before looking for a career and got a job driving a van for the Holiday Inn, which was awesome.
My work week was 32 hours and I have to say that was a pretty sweet spot for full time.
I’m not effective for the first 3 hrs or the latter 4. In fucking great at having lunch though.
A 13 hour work day, what the fuck? You would no time for anything else.
Assuming a 1 hour commute time:
7am leave for work
8am start work
9pm leave work
10pm get home
9 hours until you have to leave for work again, ~7 hours needed for sleep, only 2 hours to do anything else.
I also just learned the word “roughshod”, interesting.
2hours for cooking, eating, and all your other chores, obviously. Sounds ideal to me.
God forbid you have kids
Those are part of the chores.
Good way to limit population growth though, maybe too good.
actually it’s usually money that forbids you having kids.
so, yes.
1 hour should be enough for all that. Roll on 14 hour workday! 7 days a week.
Otherwise you’re just lazy.
/s
We need a general strike.
Some rulers really are getting too big for their britches.
The french know what to do about that.
And apparently, so do the Nepalese.
I’m ootl. Who is being told they have to work 13 hr days?
Not directly, but once the law allows for it, employers start demanding it. Individual workers have very little bargaining power to refuse at that point. So before you know it, the 13 hour day is normalized and labor protections have taken a knock back into 1920.
Read the article?
With what time? Greece just cancelled 11hrs from each day. There weren’t enough hours in a day already, and now we’re basically at half that?! Fuck.
Link is broken for me
No
They can thank IMF and government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece_and_the_International_Monetary_Fund
Great way to trade away what (notoriously poor) national productivity you have for presenteeism, less productivity and worse economy (as no-one has the time or energy to shop).
So people were not allowed to work 13 hours in 1 day up until now?
The rule we have here (Denmark) is that we must have 11 hour rest period between 2 shifts.
The normal work week is 37.5 hours, but if you want you can work 13 hours per day, since that gives you 11 hours rest.
We have some of the highest wages in Europe, possibly in part because of flexible regulation, mostly negotiated directly between unions and employers.
Denmark is also one of the easiest countries to fire people in EU, but we have one of the lowest unemployment rates.
The fact that it’s easy to fire, also makes it easy to make a decision to try to expand or start new projects. If it goes wrong, damage control can be relatively swift, and not break the company if it fails.
Are you getting paid overtime past 8 hours though? Because there’s a big difference between getting double rates for those extra hours (incentivizing your boss to hire a second worker) and demanding everyone work double shifts for normal wages.
Yes of course people are paid for overtime, the article doesn’t say anything about not being paid.
I know in USA it’s normal to not be paid for overtime, but USA is not a civilized country, I thought Greece was.
Maybe people need to unionize more.
As a full time working US citizen this made me chuckle. It’s like a fairytale hearing about the kinds of protections and guarantees people in other countries get.
To us, USA is a dystopian example of what we don’t want to become.
It’s really sad, because things were going really well, as in the right direction 50 years ago. And ironically MAGA is pulling even more in the opposite direction, pulling even further away from everything that was good about America in the 70’s.
I’m amazed when people ask if you get paid overtime… Yes, otherwise i would be home.
Do they make the days 28 hours overall to compensate?