Workers in Greece are going to have to work a little bit longer starting this week, with the country introducing a six-day work week for some.
As part of new labour laws passed last year, some Greek workers began a 48-hour work week starting Monday, a move that union representatives from across industries have termed “barbaric.”
The pro-business government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the changes are “growth-oriented” and are necessary given the country’s shrinking population and lack of skilled labour — a crisis Mitsotakis has described as a “ticking time bomb.”
However, the move is not finding many takers here in Canada.
“We do have an urgent need to fix Canada’s declining productivity. However, the solution is not necessarily to adopt longer working hours but rather work in a smarter way,” said Diana Palmerin-Velasco, senior director on the future of work at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
“To increase productivity, we need to enable an innovative economy through regulatory modernization, technological investment and adoption, digital transformation of SMEs, and better skilling and training of our workforce,” Palmerin-Velasco said.
Moshe Lander, economics professor at Concordia University, said Greece appears out of sync.
“The world seems to be going in the opposite direction. We seem to be talking about, how do we get down to a four-day work week? They want to go back to a six-day work week,” he said.
So, what does the law in Canada say about the idea?
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Work conditions are set by provincial legislation, but a nation-wide view might come from the Canada Labour Code.
The Canada Labour Code, which oversees federally regulated industries such as banking, transportation, and telecommunications, says “hours of work in a week shall be so scheduled and actually worked that each employee has at least one full day of rest in the week.”
However, it goes on to say that the number of working hours will not exceed eight hours in a day and 40 hours in a week.
Technically, it could be possible to institute a six-day work week but the federal labour code would need to be amended to increase the number of working hours. Provinces with similar rules would have to do the same for the more than 90 per cent of Canadians in non-federally regulated workplaces.
Unions in Canada fought to institute a shorter work week in 1872 and Lander said the five-day work week has not dampened productivity.
“We’ve done about 100 years of a five-day workweek, and up until about the 1980s, we were seeing productivity increase, despite the fact we were working the exact same number of days,” he said.
He said Canada’s loss of productivity in recent years had little to do with the number of days or hours Canadians worked, but more to do with the lack of competition in key sectors such as telecom, airline and retail.
When major Canadian companies have no fear of competition, he says they will not be as incentivized to innovate.
“It’s not that the Canadian worker is fundamentally lazy, it’s just that they’re not induced to work hard because the owners of the businesses that they work for are not afraid that somebody’s going to come steal the business,” he said.
Lander said Canada could leverage its free trade agreements with the United States, Mexico and trade deals with some European and Asian partners to allow more foreign competition for Canadian companies.
“I understand why you would like to see that Canadian flag over some of our businesses, but if that’s going to lead to lower productivity and a lower standard of living, maybe nationalism needs to be put aside,” he said.
He said that more foreign competition in the labour market would also help workers.
“If you only have a limited number of Canadian firms that are willing to hire you for your labor, they have all the power,” he said. “Increased productivity means increased pay.”
Meanwhile, public sector workers in Canada are demanding more flexibility in how they work.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) said in a statement Tuesday that it is ramping up efforts to fight over a three-day in-office mandate.
“PSAC members overwhelmingly oppose the government’s misguided telework mandate. They are rightfully angry that their employer is making unilateral changes to their work environments without justifying the decision with data,” PSAC said in a statement.
The union has promised a “summer of discontent” over the government’s changes.
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