It's like Greece doesn't understand what being part of a (mostly) united labor market with the EU means.

You have to offer better standards, not worse, to retain labor

The beatings will continue until morale improves!

Usually people will work less hard to save some energy for that extra day of work they have to do.

Seems like a stop gap, is there supposed to be some larger plan to turn Greece around?

The labor law challenges have already started.

Why do you think Amazon and Elon musk are arguing with the Supreme Court that the DOL and labor rights are unconstitutional.

America already permits forced unpaid overtime, especially on corporate positions. We just hide it better I guess?

Oh and we also permit slave labor, provided the "slave" is also a criminal of some kind.

I'm sure there's other examples but that's all I have at the moment.

A lot of reasons, but deeply rooted incompetence and graft in the government is a big one. A culture of tax evasion, lack of enforcement of laws on the private sector, and a lack of investment in improving industrial practices (leading to low productivity per hour worked compared to countries that DO keep up-to-date) also contribute.

I am sure the bizarrely numerous Greek billionaires are completely unrelated to their economy being fucked and not a clear sign of how deeply inequal and stratified the Greek economy is! Lots of hyper wealthy and destitute citizens means that everything is working, right?

Plenty of different reasons.

Historically, Greece was a poor country in Europe because it was the periphery of the Ottoman empire and therefore barely received investment.

Through the 20th century, the country went through pretty corrupt governments (one of them being a dictatorship).

When they joined the European market, it was already a very unproductive country in relative terms, which tends to force you into remaining in the periphery under normal market conditions; and their most educated citizens saw a very easy and profitable opportunity in just migrating out.

On top of that, the only sector of the Greek economy that had any sort of strength was tourism, which very rarely provides good wages.

By the 2007 crisis, they already had a dangerously high debt. Because they were, again, a tourism-focused economy, when the countries that had the most tourists going to Greece entered into recession, Greece's income plumetted as well, and the debt just soared.

A little bit later, Greeks elected Syriza, which had simply accepted that they were in a debt spiral that would ultimately crush the country. Syriza's leaders told the other European governments that their debt had to be renegotiated (annoying for Greece's creditors, but at least it would be possible for them to pay in some capacity), or they'd leave the Euro-zone and just declare bankruptcy (thus they wouldn't pay back anything) (terrible for Greece, but perhaps not as terrible as the alternative).

The rest of Europe told them to fuck off for a variety of reasons (plenty of German newspapers had chosen Greece as their sacrificial lamb, often calling the people of Southern European countries lazy, the Spanish president back then wanted to crush Syriza because they had been associated with a growing Spanish opposition party, generally a lot of them were into fanatical fiscal conservatism).

Then Syriza chose not to leave the Euro-zone anyway (which provoked Varoufakis to leave the government, out of principle), and just stick to managing the country's misery. It has only been shit year after shit year for Greece since then, as any possibility of steering into a different direction was shot dead. It's just a country without hope at this point.

Varoufakis (Marxist econ professor and also briefly the Greek finance minister) wrote a book about this called "the adults in the room". He's biased of course but I respect him a lot

Well whatever you do, don't give them to Socrates to look after!

Clowns have it backwards. Instead of empowering workers to make better things, to receive better education and actually become a force in this modern world, they are empowering employers so they can exploit them more. It’s like their government has a collective IQ of 6 (+/- 3). You just can’t make up this level of stupid.

It seems like "what are you going to do, fire me" is an adequate response, since they would be doing themselves more harm than good

Right? Job interview time: 6 days per week mandatory? Fuck that, I got a side hustle.

How's that any different that salary workers in the US that are exempt from OT protections and are required to work extra hours for free or else be subject to discipline, up to and including losing their job?

A lot of modern western countries do the same stuff and just hide it better or target groups that won't speak out.

Time to do domestic crimes

It began years ago. That's why things are so bad in Greece, most of the people able to leave have done already in search of a better life and leaving behind a shortage of skilled labour and labour in general. Meanwhile non economically active people, mostly children and retired still need to be supported somehow and unsurprisingly the public finances are in a poor state.

it has never stopped, there are more Greeks dispatched in the world than in Greece.