Starting July 1st, Greece will implement a six-day work week, making it the first country in the EU with 41 work hours per week.

The activation of this provision from the recent labor law applies to the public sector, public utilities, banks, and the private sector. Specifically, it affects businesses, organizations, and continuously operating enterprises that currently use a five-day work week system.

This change aims to solve issues in scheduling rotating shifts for businesses operating continuously or those with 24-hour operations for five or six days a week, while currently applying a five-day work week for employees. These businesses have struggled to find new specialized staff and the prohibition of the sixth working day significantly reduces productivity due to improper organization of rotating shifts, leading many workers to engage in undeclared and unregulated labor.

Importantly, employees working on the sixth day will be compensated an additional 40% of their daily wage, and 115% if it falls on a holiday.

According to the new provision, businesses must initially and responsibly declare to the PS ERGANI II system that they belong to the specified category of businesses to use the sixth work day.

Employment on the additional day cannot exceed 8 hours, and overtime or extra hours are not permitted for employees.

Employers must record the working hours of employees working on the sixth day in the work time organization declaration before the employees begin their shifts.

Obligations

Employers of businesses or enterprises that are not by nature continuously operating, but can operate from Monday to Saturday, 24 hours a day, with a system of rotating shifts, and where employees work a five-day week, must comply with the following to use the sixth day of the week in exceptional cases of unpredictably increased workload:

They must initially and responsibly declare to the PS ERGANI II system that they belong to the specified category of businesses.

Each time they wish to use the sixth day, they must declare in advance and always before employees begin their shifts, to the PS ERGANI II system that the business or enterprise has an unpredictably increased workload during a specific period. This special condition is subject to inspection by the competent Labor Inspectorate service.

It should be noted that Greeks, regardless of the legalization of the sixth work day, already work more hours compared to other European workers. According to 2022 data, the average weekly working hours for people aged 20-64 in the EU was 37.5 hours. In Greece, the average is 41 hours per week, followed by Poland (40.4), Romania, and Bulgaria (40.2).