Employment compensation

The European Parliament has approved the EU's inaugural directive aimed at regulating the employment rights of individuals working through online platforms.

In a significant move that reverberates across the tech industry, Amazon has disclosed plans for substantial layoffs within its cloud services division. The e-commerce giant confirmed the news, shedding light on the sweeping workforce reductions affecting various sectors including brick-and-mortar stores, technology, sales, and marketing departments.

Several major tech companies are reshaping their workforce dynamics at the beginning of 2024, with eBay becoming the latest to announce substantial layoffs. The decision to cut 1,000 jobs, despite the company's robust profits, adds to a growing list of tech giants implementing significant workforce reductions this January.

The Greek labor market showed strong resistance in July, as although the end of the school term and classes in private education resulted in the loss of 25,867 jobs in the sector and a total of 8,294 jobs across the economy, in the seven months of January to July a historic record was set with regard to hiring versus layoffs, with the creation of 296,624 new jobs.

A draft law that will be submitted to the Greek Parliament in September seeks to regulate flexible types of employment such as zero-hours contracts, where the employer is not obliged to provide a minimum number of working hours to an employee. 

These practices already exist, they are just unregulated.

Payments of productivity bonuses have started for civil servants who have achieved the goals set by government ministries for 2022. The beneficiaries are employees of the Ministry of Finance and other financial services of the state.

Turkey's Social Security Institution (SGK) has made changes in a controversial article in the labor law, widely known as Code-29, after complaints that some firms were using it to dodge a government decision that bans layoffs.

The Bulgarian government has extended until the end of May the measures known as "60/40" and "80/20" payroll support for employers in the sectors affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The "Keep me" measure to compensate employees of closed businesses is also being extended, providing an additional EUR 12,300 million from EU funds. 

Within the scope of a new economic reform package, micro and small-sized businesses that increase the number of employees on their payrolls will be granted loans between 100,000 and 500,000 Turkish Liras ($13,200 and $66,100).

Romanian nationals working in the meat industry in Germany will sign, from January 1, 2021, employment contracts directly with the German employers, and not with companies that intermediate jobs, Romania's Minister of Labour and Social Protection Violeta Alexandru wrote on Thursday on Facebook.