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If a company plans to put employees on a deficit, they do not have to make up the minus hours.
The legal situation briefly explained:
What applies to involuntary minus hours is regulated in the Swiss Code of Obligations (Art. 324). There it says: “If the work cannot be performed due to the fault of the employer or if he defaults in accepting the job management for other reasons, he remains obliged to pay the wages without the employee being obliged to make additional payments.”
For example, if an employer has forgotten to obtain a work permit for an employee – or if he generates too few orders and therefore has too little work for his employees, he still has to continue to pay them wages. Employees do not have to make up the lost hours later, nor can the lost hours be offset against overtime or vacation days.
Typical cases of involuntary minus hours
At “Espresso”, employees keep coming back who involuntarily show a “minus” on their time sheet:
- A listener was unable to work for three months after an operation. When she returned to work, her boss calculated that 85 minus hours had accumulated in the time recording system as a result of the failure. She has to rework this.
- During the corona pandemic, employees who were temporarily not allowed to work due to the protective measures reported. In many such cases, the supervisors demanded that the employees make up the missed hours later or wanted to offset them with holiday credits.
- An employee of an electrical company should also have the minus hours deducted from the holiday credit. Reason: Due to a network failure, operations were shut down for an afternoon.
The article from the Swiss Code of Obligations cited above applies to all of these cases. If an employee cannot carry out their work because the employer cannot assign them work or accept the work management, they are still entitled to full wages and do not have to make up the time or be deducted from holidays.
How employees can defend themselves
Affected employees should request in writing from their supervisors that the minus hours be deleted. Anyone who is turned off or falls on deaf ears can get support from a trade union. However, some employees do not want to risk a conflict and waive their claims. Here it is good to know that claims from an employment relationship only become statute-barred after five years. It is therefore possible to request back payment for the minus hours later, for example if you change jobs.