New Swiss Court Ruling On Short-Time Work Compensation

In a recent ruling, the Cantonal Court of Lucerne decided that holiday and public holiday compensation for persons employed on a monthly salary must be taken into account when assessing short-time work compensation on the basis of the Covid-19 Ordinance.

The normal procedure requires an individual calculation

Within the framework of the normal procedure (outside the Covid-19 Ordinance), the Unemployment Insurance Act (UIA) requires that holiday and public holiday compensation be taken into account. This is done by deducting the annual holiday and public holiday hours (e.g. five weeks of holiday based on a 40 hour week = 200 hours, and 8 public holidays of 8 hour each = 64 hours) from the annual working hours (e.g. 2080 hours) of persons employed on a monthly salary. In a second step, this net annual working time (e.g. 1816 hours) is divided by 12, resulting in the monthly working time (e.g. 151.3 hours). In a third step, the relevant monthly salary (calculated in