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Greece's parliament has approved a hotly debated work legislation that authorizes 13-hour working days, despite fierce resistance and countrywide protests.

The administration claimed the measure will revamp Greek labor regulations, but opposition figures from the left-wing party described it as a "regulatory disaster."

Key Elements of the New Labor Law

According to the freshly approved legislation, annual overtime is limited at one hundred and fifty hours, while the regular forty-hour workweek remains in place.

The government maintains that the extended workday is optional, solely affects the business sector, and can exclusively be implemented for up to thirty-seven days each year.

Parliamentary Support and Opposition

Thursday's ballot was backed by MPs from the ruling centre-right political group, with the centre-left party – now the primary resistance – rejecting the bill, while the left-wing party abstained.

Worker organizations have organized two general strikes calling for the law's repeal recently that halted transportation and public services to a standstill.

Government Defense and Employee Protections

The Labor Minister supported the bill, stating the reforms bring in line national laws with current employment conditions, and accused opposition leaders of misleading the citizens.

These regulations will give employees the choice to accept extra work with the current company for 40% higher compensation, while ensuring they will not be fired for declining extra hours.

This complies with European Union working-time rules, which cap the average workweek to forty-eight hours counting extra hours but permit flexibility over a year, according to the administration.

Opposition Viewpoints and Labor Reactions

However, critics have accused the government of weakening employee protections and "pushing the country back to a labor middle age." They say local workers currently put in more time than the majority of EU citizens while earning less and still "struggle to make ends meet."

The public-sector union stated variable shifts in reality mean "the end of the eight-hour day, the destruction of personal time and the authorization of over-exploitation."

Recent Workplace Reforms and Financial Context

In 2024, Greece introduced a six-day work schedule for specific industries in a attempt to stimulate the economy.

Recent legislation, which started at the beginning of the summer, allow workers to labor up to forty-eight hours in a workweek as opposed to 40.

European Labor Data and Greek Economic Metrics

• Throughout the EU in the previous year, the highest working weeks were recorded in Greece (39.8 hours), then Bulgaria, Poland (38.9) and Romania.
• The lowest working week in the union is in the Netherlands, as per Eurostat.
• As of January 2025, Greece's official base pay stood at nine hundred sixty-eight euros a month, placing it in the lower tier among European nations.
• Unemployment, which had peaked at 28% during the economic downturn, was eight point one percent in August versus an European mean of five point nine percent, data from Eurostat show.
• The country is improving since its decade-long debt crisis, which ended in 2018, but salaries and living standards remain among the lowest in the EU.