GREECE: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
Mike Leitao~ 07/08/2024
Greece, home of the gyro, some of the wackiest mythology you will ever hear about, and a country most well known to many for their financial crisis that lasted the better part of a decade. It truly is such a magnificent country. And as is very on brand with Greece as a whole, they had a classic situation of some positive news offset by major negative news. We can start with the minor positive to give people a shimmer of hope before annihilating it mere seconds after, since I am a hateful person who despises joy.
First up, congrats to the Greek Men’s Basketball Team for qualifying for the 2024 Olympics! Although I have made it well known my overall opinion on the upcoming Olympics, it is still a large accomplish for them to qualify and although it is likely that they have no real shot at gold (or any medal to be honest), anything can happen and with Giannis on the team they will have a shot in every game they play and will be good for the overall tournament. They beat Slovenia and then Croatia to qualify for the Olympics, which also means no Luka Doncic in the Olympics this year. And man, you got to kind of feel for the guy, spends all season dragging the Mavericks to the playoffs then through the playoffs to the NBA finals, then he has to face a super team in the finals where they lose in a convincing 5 games. Then he is right back to carrying his national team for the Olympics where he once again comes up short and doesn’t even get a chance to play Olympic ball. I hope my guy enjoys the remainder of the offseason, he has done more than enough to earn it.
Now, let's get to the negative that far over shadowed any positives from this week for Greece. On July 1st it was announced that Greece was moving to a 48-hour work week for certain industries where employees could choose between working an additional 8-hour day or adding 2 hours to their normal shifts to hit the hour threshold. Now yes, right off the bat it is important to note that this is currently optional for workers and that those who choose to participate will be paid 40% extra for their extra time. On the surface, this really might not seem like much of a bad thing, it only impacts certain industries and will allow people who are willing to work a little more to make good additional money. However, it is clear that this is a poor short-sighted solution to attempt to boost Greece’s poor economic growth. Although Greek lawmakers will claim this is to help make sure all employees are being fairly compensated for their work, it is so obvious that this has nothing to do with that and will fail and once again, proof that Greece is in need of some serious change. In no world does working more hours lead to overall better production or worker happiness. All this does is create additional stress and burnout in the employees, leading to higher turnover which in turn leads to higher business costs to deal with the increased turnover.
Multiple studies have shown that overworked employees are less efficient and end up costing companies more than if they were able to staff and keep employees at reasonable hours. As someone who works a job where my hours vary from the standard 40 all the way up to the occasional 70 and I get paid 50% extra for all hours over the standard 40, anytime I have had to work long hours in a week my overall quality of life decreases and as nice as the boosted paycheck is when it comes in, the tradeoff of my mental and physical health is almost never worth it.
We then turn to the other European countries, who all have stronger economies and are doing the exact opposite of what Greece chose to do. Multiple European countries have flirted with or flat out executed the idea of shorter work weeks without changing compensation to raging success so far. Iceland experimented with a 4-day work week multiple times during 2015 to 2019 with roughly 1% of their working population and smashing success. Some people will scoff at the idea of experiments like this providing real insight since obviously if someone gets to work less for the same amount of money, they will be happier and report lower levels of stress and burnout and higher levels of work life balance. Although that is true, it does not change the fact that the experiments also proved that productivity either remained the same or improved. It is not just Iceland, but many countries have done the opposite of Greece and lowered the hours employees are working. Norway and Denmark have 37-hour work weeks. France has had a 35-hour work week since 2000, which is a regular 9-5 day with an hour unpaid lunch break, which is still a drastic increase compared to most US jobs that will normally be something like 8:30-5 with a 30-minute unpaid lunch break. France is also currently working towards the 4-day work week this year, which I am sure will lead to positive results once implemented. Even the US, which is known for having people working longer than usual hours compared to many other areas across the world, has had discussions about potentially lowering work hours to 32 and although it will most likely take some time, I have no doubt eventually the US will get there.
This isn’t to say that Greece is stupid and making the clearly wrong choice, that is clearly the wrong choice proven by multiple other first-world countries. Just kidding, that is exactly what I am saying. It is absolutely mind boggling that the government in Greece looked at their absolutely pitiful economy and their continually decreasing population since the economic crisis in 2008 and decide that the way to fix this was to ignore all other progress the other first-world countries have made in regards to keeping its workforce happy and keeping productivity high and go the full other direction in a short sighted attempt fix a sinking ship with a bucket that has holes. But hey, if you are like me and want to visit Greece one day to see all their beautiful and historic sights, then let's keep hoping they make stupid decisions like this to keep driving down the price of tourism, might even be lucky enough to get myself in a 5 star hotel for a night or two at this rate.
