At the suggestion of cutting salaries of 2500 Euros for 20% (Note: in a country where the minimum wage is 500!) in exchange for employing a proportional number of people (to cut unemployment), "left wing" people that I know get shocked at this suggestion.

It is not true that socialists didn't try to reduce the work week before they got a severe case of neoclassic fungal brain infection

And I don't think such a scheme is a reasonable on the union level. In a way that is already the implied quid for pro that German unions signed up for the last decade. Keep your job, work for less.
It lead to surging profits invested in bubbly financial gambles, huge imbalances in the Eurozone including exported unemployment and in extremis state sponsored consumption like the car exchange program.