Working at night and on Sundays is generally prohibited in Switzerland. This is because employees should be able to recover during this time. However, there are exceptions. Do you know all the regulations on night and Sunday work?
As already mentioned, the purpose of regulating night and Sunday work is to protect night-time sleep and weekend rest for employees and to prevent health problems from arising due to a lack of such rest. For this reason, the legislator has stipulated in the Employment Act that daytime and evening work without a permit is between 6 am and 11 pm. If a company employee representative body or the majority of employees agree to this, the company working hours can be shifted forward or backward by one hour (5:00-22:00 or 7:00-24:00). In any case, however, the total company working time may not exceed 17 hours without authorization. The day and evening work of the individual employee must also be within 14 hours, including all breaks and overtime.
Outside of these limits, i.e. usually between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., the employment of workers is generally prohibited by law. Exceptions are only possible with a corresponding permit. A permit for permanent night work is only issued by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, SECO, if it is indispensable for technical or economic reasons. This may be the case, for example, if the daily ramp-up and ramp-down of production is so time-consuming or cost-intensive that it would not be worthwhile or if, for example, construction work cannot be carried out during the day as it would otherwise endanger the safety of the general public or the employees involved. Temporary night work, for example to cope with a temporary flood of orders that cannot be postponed, can be approved by the competent cantonal authority (usually the Office of Economic Affairs and/or Labor) if an urgent need can be demonstrated.
Important: It is particularly important to note, however, that even if night work has been approved, employees may only be asked to work at night with their consent.
The Employment Act also contains a ban on working on Sundays. In the period between 11 p.m. on Saturday and 11 p.m. on Sunday, employees may only be employed with a corresponding permit. Here, too, the prohibited period can be brought forward or postponed by a maximum of 1 hour if the company employee representatives or the majority of employees agree to this. Permits for permanent and temporary Sunday work are issued by the same authorities under the same conditions as for night work. Sunday work also requires the consent of the individual employee. The provisions on Sunday work also apply to work on national and cantonal holidays.
In the case of temporary night work by a specific employee (a maximum of 24 nights per calendar year applies in this context), the employee must be paid a salary supplement of 25% for the time worked at night.
If night work is to be performed on a permanent or recurring basis, the wage supplement is replaced by an additional compensatory rest period of 10% of the night work performed, which must be granted within one year from the time the night work is performed. This compensatory rest period does not have to be granted if the employee otherwise has sufficient rest time due to short shift times or short working weeks or if another equivalent compensatory rest period is granted. Detailed regulations can be found in Art. 17b para. 3 ArG. In the case of permanent night work, employees are also entitled to a medical examination and advice on the effects of night work on their state of health.
Temporary Sunday work (max. 6 Sundays per year) must always be remunerated with a wage supplement of 50% for the time worked on Sundays. In addition, employees are entitled to time compensation. If Sunday work lasts less than 5 hours, it must be compensated by an equal amount of time off. If Sunday work lasts longer than 5 hours, employees must be granted a substitute rest day of at least 24 hours during the preceding or following week in addition to the daily rest period. This means a total continuous rest period of 35 hours.
Permanent or regular Sunday work (more than 6 Sundays per year) must be compensated for with time off in the same way as temporary Sunday work , or a substitute rest day must be granted. However, the wage supplement does not apply. The authorization of uninterrupted operation in accordance with Art. 24 ArG is regulated separately. However, as this places special demands on the company organization anyway, we will not go into more detail about uninterrupted operation here.
Important: If both a wage supplement for night work and a wage supplement for Sunday work are owed for the same working time, e.g. for work from 11 p.m. on Saturday to 7 a.m. on Sunday, these wage supplements are not cumulated! The higher wage supplement of 50% applies for Sunday work.
Due to the special need for protection, the law contains special regulations for people under the age of 18 and pregnant employees. Persons under the age of 18 may not be employed at all during the night or on Sundays. Exceptions may be granted, particularly if this is in the interests of vocational training. However, very strict requirements apply in this regard and are really only permitted in individual cases.
Pregnant employees may no longer be employed between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. from the 8th week before giving birth, i.e. from the 8th month of pregnancy. There are no exceptions to this rule, either by authorization or with the consent of the employee concerned. If possible, the pregnant employee must be offered equivalent work between 6 am and 8 pm. If this is not possible, the employer is still obliged to pay the employee 80% of her salary. The same applies to employees who, with their consent, return to work between the 8th and 16th week after giving birth. In this case, however, the obligation to continue to pay wages does not apply, as the employee should simply not be employed for this period if there is no opportunity to work.
The statements made here do not apply to employees in senior management positions. Members of senior management are therefore not covered by the prohibitions on night and Sunday work. For all other employees, these provisions only apply to night and Sunday work that is ordered or at least tolerated by the employer. Although employees do not have to ask permission for every email they read, employees cannot simply choose to work at the weekend and then be entitled to compensation, especially if the employer has issued instructions against working at night and on Sundays.
In practice, it will hardly be possible and also not make sense to obtain permission if employees exceptionally answer an e-mail on a Sunday. Instead, the employer should instruct employees to refrain from working on Sundays and behave accordingly. This means, in particular, not indirectly encouraging such behavior with short deadlines or submission deadlines on Monday.
Even the practical difficulties do not change the fact that even short and exceptional night or Sunday work violates the ban on night and Sunday work and therefore requires a permit. In the absence of such a permit, sanctions may be imposed. It is therefore important to clarify whether night and/or Sunday work occurs frequently and is really necessary. In these cases, it is worth applying for at least a temporary permit. Otherwise, work processes and/or habits must be adapted so that violations are reduced to a minimum. It is also worth documenting the corresponding efforts.
The time recording solution from zeit ag can support you in controlling and managing night and Sunday work. On the one hand, the software can be configured so that it automatically recognizes when night or Sunday work has been performed by which employee and then automatically credits the corresponding wage supplements or compensatory time off to the overtime account or forwards it to the accounting department. Locking periods can also be configured so that, for example, night work cannot be booked without the knowledge of supervisors and must be approved by them.