This week, the Neuchâtel Regional Court has settled a case that had been dragging on for years: Singer, a company that manufactures watch dials in Boudry, has a policy of deducting any breaks from working time, including toilet breaks. The Unia trade union denounced this as discriminatory because women, for obvious physiological reasons, take longer. The court has ruled in favour of the company. According to the judges, the system is not unlawful provided that the company “has taken all necessary measures to reduce the discriminatory effect”. And that measure, in this case, consists of giving women an additional thirty minutes per month. Arcinfo summed it up bluntly: the court considered it sufficient to add one minute and twelve seconds’ extra time for each visit to the toilet. Unia says this is not enough and is considering an appeal.
What is surprising about this case is not just the practice itself – which was already quite exceptional when it came to light – but the fact that the courts have endorsed it without much fuss. In Switzerland, the monitoring of working hours is highly regulated, and employers have broad powers to manage it. But there is a difference between recording working hours and deducting the time a person spends in the toilet. Many European countries would regard this as a matter of dignity at work. Here, as long as there are internal regulations and ‘objectively justified’ compensation, that appears to be sufficient.
The strange thing is that the comments section on the 20 Minutos article had been disabled. The official reason: “the sensitivity of the subject”. That says it all.