Switzerland’s labour laws prove a major benefit to employers

Inour preceding columns, we already featured Switzerland’s excellent economic integration in the European Union’s markets, Switzerland’s healthy public finance and the resulting sustainably favourable tax environment. In this column, we feature Switzerland’s liberal labour laws as a further important feature benefiting employers in Switzerland.

One of Europe’s most liberal labour laws, a low degree of unionisation and moderate unions encourage hiring and essentially contribute to Switzerland’s unemployment rate of 3.3% (as of December 2012; source: Seco), which is exceptionally low compared to the EU’s average of 10.7%, 4.5% in Austria and 5.4% Germany (all November 2012; source: Eurostat). Let us have a closer look into these features.

No workers’ councils

There is no statutory duty for Swiss companies to have workers’ councils, but in companies employing more than 50, the employees may elect a workers’ representation. Employees and workers’ representation (if any) have a statutory general information right to be informed in a timely manner about matters they need to know for the performance of their jobs, and once a year they must be informed about how the company’s results may affect their jobs. Further, they have some specific statutory information and consultation rights in the following cases:

• The employer company is about to be sold by way of an asset deal or merger;
• The employer plans large-scale layoffs; and
• With the selection of pension fund carriers and certain matters of occupational health and safety.