Slow Greek recovery brings no relief to struggling workforce

Markos Markakis is 28 and works up to 13 hours a day. It took him seven attempts to find his current job, and in Greece's precarious job environment, he counts himself lucky.

"I'm happy to have a job, but outside the office, I have no life," he said.

Two years after the leftist government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras nearly crashed Greece out of the euro, and eight years after the country plunged into economic crisis, employment numbers are finally improving.

Tsipras himself recently said his administration has created 300,000 jobs since taking over in 2015, and expects the economy to grow by nearly 2.0 percent this year.

"Unemployment is falling... the road ahead is long, but we can be more confident," the prime minister said in a televised interview in July.

Also in July, the country made a positive test debt issue after three years of exile from money markets, and leading rating agencies are cautiously optimistic about its prospects.

But try telling that to people like Yiannis, who works at an Athens brasserie from 7 pm to 4 am (1600 GMT to 0100 GMT) every day for 30 euros ($35) -- and one or two days of rest per month.

"If you turn down a job offer, you know there is a risk of not finding another one," said the 22-year-old, adding that he was actually grateful for the paltry sum he was earning when others were jobless.

Officially, unemployment is falling. In April it was 21.7 percent, down from a high of 27.8 percent in 2013.

But labour groups in Greece have always suspected that real unemployment is far higher than official figures show -- for example, those not actively seeking a job are not counted as unemployed.

The European Central Bank, using different criteria, in July said 31.3 percent of Greece's workforce was "under-utilised" at the end of last year, some eight points above Greek unemployment data.

Savvas Robolis, senior labour analyst at leading private-sector union GSEE, said undeclared work was at an all-time high.

"In one of our studies, we estimated that one in 15 employees was undeclared," he said.

Greece's EU-IMF creditors have long argued that the country's highly unionised labour environment stifled job creation.

Enter the solution of part-time flexibility.

According to the OECD, part-time work -- qualified as fewer than 30 hours per week and once considered an oddity in a country of small family-run enterprises -- has nearly doubled in Greece these past ten years to over 11 percent of total employment.

Facing a stark choice between emigrating abroad or sinking into inability to pay mounting taxes, many are opting for part-time work.

- 'The definition of job precarity' -

But analyst Robolis warned that "part-time work is the definition of precarity."

"Young workers on average earn a monthly salary of 380 euros ($446), half the legal minimum wage," he said.

And employers hold all the cards in a market of warped, so-called flexibility, the expert added.

"There is job flexibility in both directions," Robolis said.

"In terms of the workday, employers can impose additional hours as they see fit. But we also know that the salaries of 900,000 people in the private sector are between one and fifteen months in arrears," he said.

The Bank of Greece says fewer restrictions in the job market -- enthusiastically endorsed by the country's international creditors -- have created 150,000 part-time jobs in the last two years.

But most of these employers, unions say, routinely force their staff to work unpaid hours above and beyond their contract, skimping out on both wages and social insurance contributions.

That's the case with Yiannis.

"My employer has me registered as part-time. That way, he pays less," he said.

According to Greece's main social insurance fund EFKA, fewer than 10 percent of young employees aged 20-24 have social insurance cover.

At this rate, it's no wonder that Greece's best and brightest are emigrating.

"Right now, I have no time to think of anything but my work," Markos admitted.

"But when I see my friends abroad working half the time for five times more, it makes me want to leave too."

Source: AFP