Hello,

I'm having my baby in the beginning of December and wanted to know if the law in Switzerland obligates my employer to give me more days for the public Holidays in December and January. I live and work in Zurich.
As I understand I get 14 weeks of 80% salery for maternity leave. Do I get anything for breast feeding?

Thanks

bump!!

i just received the public holidays for 2014 from my employer, plus the bridge-days that we get extra for working 15 minutes additional each day to give us an extra 6 days of holiday throughout the year.

there are 5 public holidays + 2 bridge days during my maternity leave for next year (half of all public holidays for 2014!) and i asked my employer if i'm entitled to get the days back.
they said that the public holidays are set and i won't get them back, but i'm still entitled to my full normal vacation days.

if you take vacation time during public holidays, the public holiday doesn't count as a vacation day. and also at my work, the bridge days don't count as vacation days either. so why should it count as a meternity leave? i'm entitled to 14 weeks (so 14 x 5 = 70 days), so these 5 public holidays + 2 bridge days should add up to an extra 7 days of maternity leave, right?

maybe i'm SOL with the bridge days, but does anyone know the law regarding public holidays during maternity leave?

thanks in advance!

Alltough commonly called maternity leave / Mutterschaftsurlaub it is legally called maternity compensaton or maternity benefits / Mutterschaftsentschädigung.
The law (Erwerbsersatzgesetz) entitles you to up to a maximum of 98 days of benefits (14 x 7).

The benefit is paid every day of the week, regardless if it is a holiday, sunday, or dommsday.

I don't know about your employer specifically, but I had my first child here in November and we get one week between Christmas and New Year's day as holidays (this is at the ETH). I did not get extra maternity time even though this week would have been paid holiday. I also confirmed this through HR at the time: the benefit was 14 weeks, regardless of whatever public holidays or set holidays were within that time period.

It was also explained to me using aSwissInTheUS's logic-you're paid from a different fund (it's an insurance fund) that runs for 14 weeks from the birth, so benefits don't "pause" for public holidays.

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Where are we going and what's with this handbasket?

I can't help but wonder if these maternity benefits keep a lot of employers from hiring women.

Thank you for your help