FROM HAYMARKET (1886) TO THESSALONIKI (1896) AND KERAMEOS (2025): THE CONTINUOUS BETRAYAL OF WORKERS’ BLOOD

On June 27, 2025, Greek Labour Minister Niki Kerameos signed the so-called “Fair Work” bill into law, officially legalizing 13-hour workdays.
The bill invokes the notion of “employee consent,” but history exposes the farce: 139 years after the Haymarket massacre (Chicago, 1886) and 129 years after the first Greek 8-hour strike in Thessaloniki (1896), Greece returns to the 19th century’s darkest industrial nightmares, this time with legal cover and PR packaging.
In 1886, American workers were shot and hanged for demanding 8-hour shifts.
In 1896, Greek workers in a Thessaloniki tobacco factory were burned alive for the same reason.
In 2025, the Greek Parliament revives the master-servant model, only now it calls it flexibility. When the employer controls your wage, your rent, and your access to survival, the idea of “voluntary agreement” becomes a euphemism for coerced obedience.
It’s not policy—it’s corporate feudalism, neatly framed by the rule of law.
We are told overtime will be “paid.” We are assured there will be “protections.”
But the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound, 2024) has made it clear: only 18% of EU workers are fully paid for overtime, a percentage that drops to fantasy levels in austerity-ravaged Greece.

Meanwhile, Minister Kerameos speaks of “modernization” and “choice.” Yes—like choosing between starvation and exhaustion.
Like choosing to work 13 hours so you can still afford your rent, just before you collapse.
This is not flexibility.
This is survivalism with a corporate smile.

Let us be clear: the 8-hour day was never a gift.
It was won with blood.
With bullets, fire, prison and protest. And now, that blood is erased with a signature. Not just a betrayal—it is historical blasphemy.
The absence of MPs during the July 6th vote only intensifies the outrage.
Not only was this law passed—it was passed without resistance, without shame, without the faintest echo of responsibility from a Parliament that hasn’t worked 13 hours in a month, let alone in a single day.

This law is not an isolated event.
It is the culmination of a process: the erosion of labour rights that began with “flexible” contracts under technocratic governments, accelerated during the memorandum years, and now arrives at its logical conclusion—the selling off of human time as disposable capital.
Let us not fool ourselves.
Thirteen hours of work is not just an economic condition.
It is the theft of life: time for rest, time for family, time to think, time to be human.
But in this new doctrine, the worker is expected to function as a machine—tireless, voiceless, and disposable.
Maybe humanity was never included in the legislation.
Maybe it was omitted on purpose.

And so, Greece writes history again, but not with dignity.
From Haymarket to Thessaloniki to Kerameos, the cycle is complete. Not as the workers dreamed, but as the managers planned: with a tombstone titled “Fair Work.” Irony so sharp, it could resurrect the dead of 1886 just so they can denounce it themselves.

Because this is not policy. It’s sacrilege.

And for those who think this is “progress,” remember: The 8-hour day was not a gift from politicians, it was the spoils of struggle written in blood.
And every blood betrayed rewrites the History!