In the past few days I have been asked several times whe­ther short-time work has to be intro­du­ced for the whole com­pany or whe­ther it can be limi­ted to indi­vi­dual employees.

Short-time work is aut­ho­ri­sed for the com­pany or part of the com­pany (and not for the indi­vi­dual employee). The loss of working hours requi­red for the aut­ho­ri­sa­tion must amount to at least 10% of the total num­ber of hours worked by the employees of the com­pany (or part of the com­pany) (per accoun­ting period). Accord­in­gly, for the cal­cu­la­tion of the mini­mum loss of working hours, all employees for whom short-time allo­wance could in principle be clai­med must be taken into account. In order to cal­cu­late the mini­mum loss of work necessary for the appro­val of the mea­sure, all employees in the com­pany or part of the com­pany for whom short-time allo­wance could be clai­med (=enti­t­led employees) are the­re­fore taken into account.

This does not mean, howe­ver, that short-time work app­lies to all employees of the com­pany or part of the com­pany (for which it is reques­ted). A dis­tinc­tion must be made bet­ween the cal­cu­la­tion of the loss of working hours, for which all eli­gi­ble employees are taken into account and which is a pre­re­qui­site for the gran­ting of an aut­ho­ri­sa­tion in the first place, and the employees who are actually affec­ted by it. The employee must also agree to this. For this rea­son, the preli­mi­nary noti­fi­ca­tion of short-time work to be sub­mit­ted to the can­to­nal employ­ment office must indi­cate the num­ber of workers affec­ted by the mea­sure and the form to be signed by the workers con­cer­ned (“Con­sent to short-time work”) must be sub­mit­ted as an attach­ment to the preli­mi­nary notification.

The employees affec­ted by this can then also have dif­fe­rent degrees of short-time work (the indi­vi­dual loss of working hours can be dif­fe­rent). Finally, it should be noted that the can­to­nal employ­ment offices have made spe­cial “COVID-19” forms avail­able on their websites.

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