BERN - The Council of States' Economic Affairs Committee approved a parliamentary proposal on Tuesday that loosens the working time rules for remote work, after the National Council had already given its green light. The file now moves a step closer to changing how hundreds of thousands of home office days are structured.
Three relaxations make up the core. First, the daily work period for remote work may span a 17-hour window, up from the current 14 hours, allowing an early shift before school drop-off and a late one after dinner. Second, the mandatory rest period falls from 11 to 9 hours, and it may be interrupted for emergencies. Third, working on Sundays becomes possible for up to five hours, though no more than nine times a year.
Flexibility, or the always-on office
Supporters frame the change as the law catching up with reality: laptops do not close at 19:00, and parents in particular want hours that bend around family life. Critics hear something else in the wider window, a working day that never quite ends, and point out that rest rules exist because fatigue does not negotiate.
The debate will sharpen as the file advances. It lands in the same week the SP, gathered in Thun, adopted a position paper titled "Good work for all" that demands shorter working hours, higher wages and more co-determination, a reminder that the direction of Swiss labour law is contested in both directions at once.