On-call work (travail sur appel in French, Abrufarbeit in German) is very common in the hospitality, care, retail and cleaning sectors. The company calls you when they need you, and you turn up. There are no guaranteed hours and no fixed timetable. Many people accept this because it offers a degree of flexibility, or simply because it is the only job available at the time. But there are rules that are rarely explained properly, either by the company or by anyone else.
Firstly: this type of contract does not exempt you from social security contributions. If you work on a recurring basis – even if it’s just for one-off assignments – your employer must make contributions on your behalf to the AVS, the LAA (workplace accidents scheme) and the pension fund if your salary exceeds certain annual thresholds. The arrangement sometimes found in informal sectors, where an employer says “I’ll pay you in cash when I call you”, is not an on-call contract. It is work without protection, which is a far worse situation altogether.
The second point is what surprises people the most: if you have been working on a regular basis for several months and your employer always calls you on the same days and at the same times, this can create a pattern recognised by the Swiss Code of Obligations (Articles 326–326b CO). If the employer unilaterally changes that pattern without prior notice or justification, they may be liable to pay compensation to the employee. In practice, this is difficult to prove, and few take it that far. But the right exists, and many employees accept reductions in hours or weeks off work on the assumption that there is nothing they can do about it. This is not always the case.
And thirdly: if your employer stops calling you and you are left without an income, you may be entitled to unemployment benefit if you have made sufficient contributions. You don’t need a formal dismissal or a letter. A verifiable loss of working hours also makes you eligible for RAV. Before assuming there’s nothing you can claim, it’s worth checking with the unemployment office or a trade union, as many people only realise this when it’s too late.