Workers of certain private companies in Greece may be forced to work six days and 48 hours a week if your employer requires it, according to a new law that comes into force this Monday.

Employers of companies that operate 24 hours a day throughout the week, such as factories and other types of industrieswill have the right to impose a sixth working day and 48 hours of work per week on their workers if necessary.

Employees will receive for it an additional 40% on the daily wage for those eight extra hours, while if that sixth day is a Sunday or holiday, the increase rises to 115%.

The extended working week can also be imposed on companies that operate 24 hours a day for only five or six days a week, according to the law, which was passed last September by the conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Although in this case the measure can be applied only in “exceptional” periods of increased workloadBoth trade unions and the left-wing opposition argue that the law will in practice make the six-day work week “commonplace”, taking into account, they also claim, the almost non-existent labour inspections.

The change in the labour law was approved by the votes of Mitsotakis’ conservative New Democracy (ND) party, and triggered a barrage of criticism from the opposition and a wave of strikes and protests by trade unions. According to the then Labour Minister Adonis Georgiadis, the law comes to put “order” in what he called the “jungle” of the Greek labor marketwhere most employees were already working more than 40 hours a week through undeclared overtime.

According to the Executive, the measure comes to cover an “exceptional condition”, since in specific periods there are Lack of supply of skilled workers In certain sectors, this has to be covered in some way. Offering six-day-a-week contracts has so far been an option only open to a few sectors, such as catering and tourism.