In Spain, employees usually choose their own holiday dates, typically within a period agreed with the company. In Switzerland, the approach is different from the outset. The employer has the right to set the holiday dates, and may even close the entire company for one or two weeks in August, requiring you to take your holiday entitlement during that period. This is known as ‘Betriebsferien’, or ‘fermeture annuelle’ in the French-speaking part of the country, and has been standard practice in many sectors for decades.
The Swiss Code of Obligations (Art. 329c) allows the employer to set the dates for annual leave, provided that they take the employee’s interests into account and give them sufficient notice. What the law does not specify exactly is how far in advance they must give you notice, and this depends on the relevant collective agreement or individual contract. In many collective agreements, the notice period is three months. In practice, some companies give very short notice and may technically be operating at the very limit of what is lawful.
What is clear is that if the company closes for two weeks and you only have eight days’ accrued holiday, you cannot end up with a negative balance without a prior agreement. Those extra days must be compensated for: either they are paid, or they are carried over by mutual agreement, or another solution is found. What the employer cannot do is simply deduct the days you do not have from your pay, without further ado.
What many people from Spain don’t realise when they arrive is that you can’t always choose when to take your holiday here. If the August holiday period is set out in the collective agreement or your contract, that is when you must take your holiday, even if you have other plans. And for someone who has spent years planning to spend August at home with their family, this can come as a real shock in the first year.