[ad_1]
Thousands upon thousands of people sit on weekdays where they had already sat in spring: at the kitchen table, on the sofa, in a makeshift office corner in the hallway or in the bedroom. The central office is a cornerstone in the fight against the pandemic and is explicitly recommended by the Federal Council.
SP Health Minister Alain Berset (48) wanted to go further in late October and make the Interior Ministry mandatory whenever possible. Berset was frustrated by his colleagues in the bourgeois government.
Berset to new measures: “Last chance to avoid the blockade”(03:10)
But now Berset is making another go for the holiday season. Employers must ensure that their employees “fulfill their work obligations as far from home as possible,” says the latest draft of the Corona regulation, which is available to SEE. To do this, they would have to take “the appropriate organizational and technical measures.”
Berset is putting exactly the same wording on the table as in October. In his explanations at the time, he made it clear: “The home office is no longer just a recommendation from the BAG, but there is now an obligation to work from home, to the extent that this is operationally possible.”
Cassis argued against the obligation to work from home
It was precisely this mandatory requirement that Berset’s bourgeois colleagues had raised at the barricades. At the forefront, the foreign department of the FDP, Federal Councilor Ignazio Cassis (59) opposed. The home office obligation “goes too far,” Cassis’s secretary general wrote in the official query. Cassis feared that the central office obligation would lead to “potential claims, either against the employer or against the federal government.”
The obligation to work from home should not be associated with, at best, even financial claims. “It would be fatal to impose additional costs on companies in the current situation,” Cassis’s department said.
The Finance Department of the Federal Councilor SVP Ueli Maurer (70) also wanted to leave it in a recommendation – which had “proved its effectiveness in the spring”.
Limited until January 20, 2021
Now Berset is again debating the home office requirement. Because the current development of corona case numbers is not at all satisfactory. Looking ahead to the Christmas and New Year holidays, the numbers should decline further, Virginie Masserey of the Federal Office of Public Health (BAG) told the media on Tuesday.
If you want to celebrate Christmas sensibly, contacts should be further reduced, says Berset’s proposal in the Bundesbern. The Ministry of the Interior is a particularly effective measure in this regard. Under the draft ordinance, the obligation to work from home would initially be limited to January 20, 2021.
The SP Federal Council tends to have the cantons on its side. As early as October, most of them supported the idea, as stated by the Health Directors Conference in its statement at the time. On the other hand, the resistance is likely to come from the bourgeoisie and businessmen.
Legal consequences
If Berset prevails this time, this would have significant legal consequences. The position of the employees would have been strengthened in some disputes, for example, in the gossip between office workers and the boardroom of Coop. But the reverse also applies: Employees might also be less reluctant to work from home if they prefer to work in a company.
“If an employee refuses to work in the central office, he loses the right to his salary,” said labor lawyer and HSG professor emeritus Thomas Geiser (68) recently in Sunday hearing. “In contrast, an employee who can work from home could not be forced to continue working in the office.” Clearly, employers who have to work from home would have to reimburse their employees for labor costs, for example printer cartridges or desktops.
Geiser: “If the parties do not agree, the employees would have a better legal starting position to obtain reimbursement for these expenses.”
