Can worker exhaustion save an economy? Europe is currently facing a serious competitiveness crisis in its industry, and many point to “high labor costs” as the culprit.

However, Judith Kirton-Darling, General Secretary of industriAll Europe (a European federation of trade unions), debunks this myth in an article for Social Europe.

Using Greece as the ultimate example of failure, she shows that grueling work schedules and the erosion of rights do not bring growth. Instead, they hide the real problem, which is nothing other than systematic underinvestment by businesses.

Greece ranks first in working hours in the European Union. At the same time, it has introduced extreme measures such as the six-day workweek and the right to work 13 hours a day.

Yet Greek industry has not become more competitive. On the contrary, it is a living example of an economic failure that Europe is dangerously inclined to copy.

The workers’ message

Today, workers from across Belgium are gathering in Brussels for a national day of action.

Their message to the federal government is simple: Stay out of our pockets:

• An end to further violations of automatic wage indexation, which protects workers from inflation.
• No increase in value-added tax (VAT), which hits those with the least the hardest.
• And no annualization of working time, which would allow employers to extend the workweek.

IndustriAll Europe stands with its Belgian union colleagues, because the proposals being discussed in Brussels today are the same ones being presented in boardrooms and finance ministries across Europe: that workers cost too much, and that competitiveness can be restored by making them cheaper, having them work longer, and asking them, once again, to carry the burden of Europe’s economic crisis.

The data and the experience of Europe’s industrial workers say the opposite.

The example of Greece

Since 2000, total gross profits in Europe’s non-financial sector have grown almost twice as fast as the average wage. In manufacturing, value added per worker has outpaced wages per worker by 16 percentage points. Workers are more productive than ever. They simply do not get a share of the wealth they have created.

Nor are labor costs the burden dragging down European industry. In many sectors, labor costs have remained stable as a share of revenue for 25 years, while in the automotive and supplier sector they fell from 13.9% of revenue in 2020 to 10.7% in 2025.

The arguments for longer working hours are even weaker. Car plants, steel mills, and chemical facilities across Europe are already operating well below capacity. Not a single extra car, wind turbine, or kilogram of cement will be sold because the workforce stays one hour longer.

In countries where working time has increased, such as Greece, which already had the longest working hours in the European Union (EU) and now allows six-day weeks and 13-hour days, there is no evidence that this has made industry more competitive.

We have seen this before. After the 2008-09 crisis, Europe froze wages and decentralized collective bargaining.

The result was a second, self-inflicted recession, because workers could no longer afford to buy what they produced. This is exactly why the wage indexation rules defended by Belgian unions are precisely the kind of protection that could prevent a similar situation from happening again.

Is there a solution?

So how could Europe resolve its current economic slump?

One area that needs closer scrutiny is corporate governance rules, management incentives, and ownership structures.

As European industry increasingly falls under the control of global asset managers and private equity funds that prioritize short-term profits and liquid returns, corporate leaders pursue strategies that maximize shareholder value and are often rewarded for cuts rather than growth.

The value created in European factories is then paid out to shareholders, who often will never set foot in the factories they own.

As a result, profits are not flowing where they should. Business investment in the EU has fallen from 13.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019 to 12.5% in 2024, driven by rising shareholder payouts. As dividends have increased, the share of reinvested profits has declined.

That is why the alternatives offered by Belgian unions matter. Taxing share buybacks and capital income is not an attack on business. It is a reasonable demand that those who have received the largest share of profits contribute more to our common efforts, rather than forcing workers, once again, to pay the bill.

The same logic must guide Europe

Public support for industry, from the Industrial Accelerator Act to the next EU budget, must come with binding social conditions: guaranteed quality jobs, collective bargaining rights, access to training, and protection against relocation, with no public money going to dividends or buybacks.

These conditions are all ways in which we can steer capital back into European industry and toward productive capacity, while also helping achieve critical social and environmental goals.

The Industrial Accelerator Act is another key option, as it would give priority to European-made products in public procurement and public support in strategic sectors, using a major source of demand to directly support European industry and preserve European value chains.

Europe’s industrial workers are at a crossroads.

We have all the ingredients needed to thrive: a skilled workforce, the largest single market, world-class research institutions, competitive businesses, and political stability. None of this requires asking workers to pay the price for decades of underinvestment.

On October 9, Belgian workers are demonstrating to say that they are not the cost but the solution. Through industriAll Europe’s “End is Enough” campaign, workers across Europe are saying it with them.