On-call work (travail sur appel) is one of the most common types of contract in the hospitality, retail, cleaning and care sectors. The employer calls you when there is work to be done, and doesn’t when there isn’t. It sounds convenient for the company. In Switzerland, however, the business risk does not fall on the worker, and that changes things quite a bit.
The case law of the Federal Court is clear: an on-call contract is not a series of one-off mini-contracts. It is a single contract of indefinite duration. This has a direct consequence: if the employer decides to let you go, they cannot simply stop calling you. The statutory notice periods set out in the Swiss Code of Obligations (CO) apply, and during that period you are entitled to your average wage calculated over the previous 6 or 12 months, regardless of whether you actually worked on those days.
Article 324 of the Labour Code gets straight to the point: if your employer cannot offer you work for reasons attributable to them, including a downturn in business or a quiet period, the financial risk is theirs. You are entitled to your salary even if you haven’t set foot in the workplace. The same applies to holiday leave: a minimum of four weeks’ holiday per year is guaranteed, with at least two consecutive weeks, regardless of the number of days actually worked. Sick pay is calculated based on the duration of the contract, not on the hours worked.
In practice, the problem stems from poorly drafted contracts. If the document does not specify a minimum number of guaranteed hours, the employer can argue that the historical average is low and calculate your pay during the notice period accordingly. Collective labour agreements (CLAs) can improve these conditions: in the hospitality sector, the L-GAV sets out rules that offer greater protection than the standard Labour Code. Before signing any on-call contract, it is worth checking which CLA applies to your sector and what it specifically states regarding this type of contract.
- Swiss Federal Council, report on the regulation of on-call work: https://www.newsd.admin.ch/newsd/message/attachments/69051.pdf - Parlament.ch, motion 19.3748 "Regulating on-call work": https://www.parlament.ch/fr/ratsbetrieb/suche-curia-vista/geschaeft?AffairId=20193748 - espacedroit.ch, on-call work in Switzerland: https://www.espacedroit.ch/en/topics/travail-sur-appel-en/