General strike against 13-hour day brings Greece to a halt
Transport systems, hospitals and schools hit, as workers say laws kill hopes of work-life balance
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.
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.
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. ::: spoiler 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:
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.
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.
I'm not effective for the first 3 hrs or the latter 4. In fucking great at having lunch though.
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.
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.
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.
