I have a query regarding the Holiday allowance system in switzerland. I work 80% . As per my contract I should be getting the usual 4 weeks holiday per year.
The question arises, how the number of holidays is calculated when I work 80% but attend 90% or 100% of the days at work place. Am I eligible for full 4 weeks holiday or 80% of 4 weeks? Or do I have a right to argue for asking 90% of the holidays as i attend 90% of the days instead of 80%.

Please guide me, or give me any links with such information.

Thanks!

Noni. S

Holiday entitlement is 4 weeks. You should be paid your usual 80% salary during your holidays.

If you are working 90% despite the 80% contract, then you are entitled to overtime payments or compensatory time off.

If your pay is 80% of normal, then I believe it is standard practice that your holiday entitlement will be 80% also. I would have thought this should be something that was made clear in your contract?

I had the same arrangement when I was back in the UK, and although I was in the office every day, I still got 80% of the full holiday allowance. I had two half days each week. However, if I took one of the half days off as holiday, it only "cost" me half a day out of my total holiday allowance, so I think it was a fair deal.

Sorry... Probably not the answer you were hoping for

It is certainly not standard practice. Holidays are the same regardless of whether you're working 10, 50 or 100 percent. Your salary is the only thing that varies.

I worked 4 years at 50% (single dad raising kid) and still received my 5 weeks paid vacation every year at the same (50%) salary. I worked one week on, one week off so the killer part was every time I took one week vacation I was actually 3 weeks off work..!! So I actually had 5 x 3 weeks vacation every year

Sorry if I have got this wrong. Maybe I should have said "in my experience" rather than "I believe that it is standard practice". I think I made it reasonably clear that my experience was from the UK, so thanks if the Swiss system to part-time working is completely different.

I have to say I am surprised though. Are you talking about the full allowance in terms of weeks, or in terms of hours/days?

For example:
Someone works two days a week. If they take one of those days off as holiday, do you mean that it counts as just one day off their 4 weeks allowance? That doesn't seem right to me.

Holiday time in Switzerland is counted in days. If a person has 4 weeks off that translates to 20 days. It doesn't matter if the person works 1 or 8 hours a day or 1 to 40 hours a week, to take the day off costs 1 day of the 20 day vacation allowance but... it could mean taking the full week off counting as 5 days of the person's regular work week.

OK thanks, sounds like it is a bit different to the UK. It makes sense to me if you are taking a whole week off at a time, which I guess is what most people do.

However, I'm still a bit hazy on how it works out if you don't work equal hours each day during the week and only want to take say one day off. If you work Mondays and Tuesdays normally, but want to take the Monday as holiday, do they count it as 2.5 days of your 4 week allowance?

The number of hours worked only ever comes into play when you do overtime as far as holidays are concerned.

One day off counts as one day off, regardless the number of hours. The law is worded in terms of working days.

Alrighty buddies,
I guess I haven't clarified at first go. And therefore I haven't got the answer to my question yet.

And first of all, I am wanting to know about the SWISS hoilday allowance system and not from UK or USA.

In my company, working hours is counted as 42 hours per week and I work 80% of those 42 hours. Which means, I cover those 80% of weekly hours in 4 days in week 1 and 5 days in week 2. (I don't make any over time so please lets not discuss about over time here as thats leading to a different topic)

So I go regularly to work 90% from the DAY point of view. The confusion for me is, if the number of days attended at work counts for the number of holiday or is it only the number of hours which is counted?
For me its fair enough if I go to work only 4 days a week and cover up those 80% of working hours instead of going the 5th day and still get 80% of my 4 weeks of holiday. I was thinking, if they are deducting my holiday allowance from day point of view then why not I get atleast 90% of the 4 weeks holiday, because anyway i am attending to work 90% of the days.

A simple example, a friend of mine goes to work only 4 days a week as she works 80%. And she gets 80% of the 4 weeks holiday. She is gaining 1 day off every week and so its fair enough.

But in my case, I am gaining one day off in every 2 weeks, and still getting 80% of the 4 weeks holiday.

And another friend of mine, who is also working 80%, goes to work all 5 days a week but she is getting 100% of the holiday allowance.

So whats left for me in my special case

I don't understand what you're saying here. Are you only being given 80% of 4 weeks (i.e. 16 days instead of 20) of holiday? It's been stated before several times in this thread already: holiday leave is an absolute value, and you are entitled to 20 days, regardless of what percentage you work.

Your 'special case' seems to be that you are currently working more than you are being paid for: i.e. 90% instead of 80%, and you basically have extra 'days off' accumulating, which aren't really holiday, but time off owed for hours you've already put in. This is something I wouldn't advise doing unless you cleared it with your employer first.

I also work 80%, and on occasion work a week at 100% so I can take a day or two off and not have these days deducted from my holiday leave (although, to be honest, they don't really keep track of leave here anyway). However, I always clear this with my boss first, and I try to not this this too much. I'm not just paid to be here a certain number of hours over the year, I'm sort of expected to be in at work on a more-or-less regular basis. I don't know what the expectations are for your job.

In short, you still have the right to 20 full days holiday leave from work, and it sounds like you are also owed some days off due to the extra hours you've already put in (one day for every two weeks' work, basically). Until you sort this out and find out if this situation is acceptable with your boss, I'd go back to working at 80%. You are currently working one day every second week for free.

Heather

Ok its like this.

You are contracted to work 80% of 42 hours per week. That is 4 days per week if you work 8:24 per day.

If you work less each day and need to come in the 5th day to make up your hours it doesn't matter. You are contracted for a certain number of hours and you need to get them done.

In practice the "Zeiterfassung" is done monthly, which means there is a certain number of hours you need to get done in the month (80% x 8:24 x the number of working days in the month) If you work this number of hours then you have no problems.

Holidays are where the system worked here gets complicated. if you work 80% you still get the full holiday allowance. However each day that you take as a holiday day is credited to you as 80% of 8:24. Therefore, if you take a full week, five days are put in the time accounting system, but the number of hours equals 80% of a full 42 hour week. If you take 1 day off you still only get credited with 80% of a day. It will all even up over the year but you may end up being short of hours on one month because of this. Usually a little overtime hides this discrepancy and there are no problems.

You need to sit down and discuss this with your HR department. In my view, if you always work 9 days out of 10, you should have 18 days holiday allowance but it really needs to be confirmed with your HR people. They may see it differently (they may know things about your contract that I don't e.g.).

It's already been explained in a previous post, your holiday leave is not counted in hours, rather days or weeks.
Example: You work a 5 day work week and you get 4 weeks vacation that works out to 20 days. 4 day week = 16 days. 3 day week = 12 days etc. etc. etc. The days are not broken down into hours if you work less than 8 hours any given day.. you get the day off, period.
Now make up your mind, either you have a contract for 80% or 90%..? If you have a contract for 4 days work per week then that's all you get per weeks holiday, 4 days. If your contract calls for you to be at work 5 days a week then that's what you get off in a weeks time. Any overtime pay you might accumulate has no impact on your holiday allowance unless of course you're taking it as compensation.

Yes, Eire!! you got me correct.......thats exactly my case, and i think u explained well. But can u clearly tell me how many days are left for my holidays? is it 18, 19, or 20? Its surely not 16 days, as vwild1 wrote.

can somebody pls refer me some employment rights agency in and around Zürich.

I guess Tilia you are right, it should be 18 days, and you are absolutely right that i should contact my HR dept for this case, but before approaching to them I needed to gather some legal info, may be just for the basis of my arguements (if occured)
anyways, thanks a lot for the help....!

You need to work out your holiday allowance in hours. If you have 4 weeks holidays that's 20 days.

20 x (8:24x80%) is the number of hours holiday leave you have.

Each days holiday you have taken is (8:24x80%) taken away from your holiday hours.

Subtract the hours you have already used in holidays and that is the number of hours you have left.

Divide by (8:24x80%) to get the number of days you have left.

How many days does it state on your contract..? You don't have a supervisor or someone in the HR department to tell you...??

Holiday pay is normally not configured by the hour in Switzerland (it's holi"day" pay, not holi"hour" pay). It doesn't matter if you work a 1 hour day or a 12 hour day, you get the day off.
Example: I used to work some funny shifts, one day might be 4 hours long, the next was 10 but it didn't matter if I took the 4 hour day off or the 10 hour day off I used 1 day of my holiday allowance for each day off work.

If its a big company that uses a computer system your days are actually broken down into hours by the computer. If you work 100% you won't even notice this because everything is divided back to days. But if you work percentage like 80% then you will notice it very quickly.

I work 90% and also do the monthly "Zeiterfassung" for my department so I have the joy of turning those hours back into days for myself and the other people who don't work 100% in my office. Even though I only work 90% I still get 25 days holidays a year just like the 100% people. Just each one of my 25 days is only worth 7:36 instead of 8:24, and if you take days holidays here and there instead of full weeks all the time you have to go back to the hourly thing to work out exactly how much holidays you have left.

You are right that you can't take an hours holiday, but you can take a half days holiday which amounts to 4:12 so it still comes down to hours weather you like it or not.