ATHENS: Greek trains, ferries and taxis were halted and protests were expected in the capital Athens on Wednesday during a one-day general strike against extended working hours.<\/p>\n
The action was organized by Greece\u2019s largest private and public trade unions to protest a government plan to extend a 13-hour working day cap now in effect for workers with two jobs to workers with one job. The rule is expected to pass in October, a labor ministry official said.<\/p>\n
Unions say it will increase pressure on workers in Greece, which is emerging from the 2009-2018 debt crisis that slashed wages and pensions and caused unemployment to skyrocket. While Greece\u2019s economy is recovering and living standards have improved after a series of pay increases, Greeks still trail their European peers in purchasing power on rising housing and food costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe say no to a 13-hour workday. Working time is not a commodity. It\u2019s our life,\u201d the GSEE union, which represents about 2.5 million workers in the private sector, said in a statement ahead of the strike.<\/p>\n
Workers are expected to gather in central Athens in the morning.<\/p>\n
The government says the reform would apply only for up to 37 days a year, offer workers the chance to get 40 percent overtime payments and that it comes following employers and workers\u2019 demands for a more flexible labor market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ATHENS: Greek trains, ferries and taxis were halted and protests were expected in the capital Athens on Wednesday during a one-day general strike against extended working hours. The action was organized by Greece\u2019s largest private and public trade unions to protest a government plan to extend a 13-hour working day cap now in effect for …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":87552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87528"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87540,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87528\/revisions\/87540"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}