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The canton is flooded with short-term job applications. There are delays in payment because companies send incomplete documents to the responsible authority.
The crown crisis is shaking the economy in the canton of Lucerne. This is shown in the current figures on short-term work in the canton, which the responsible authority WAS wira Luzern published yesterday just on Labor Day. Accordingly, 97,000 employees are affected. This corresponds to about 39 percent of all employees in the canton of Lucerne. A total of 7,500 companies are affected.
Martin Bucherer, head of the WAS office wira Luzern, says:
“The volume exceeds all expectations.”
A large increase was expected, but not in these dimensions. In the 2007/2008 financial crisis, there had already been many short-term job applications. But Corona beats it all: “There are currently almost ten times as many requests as during the financial crisis.”
Martin Bucherer, head of WAS wira Luzern.
To cope with the rush, the authority has vastly increased staff. While an 80 percent workload was enough to settle short-term workers’ compensation before the crisis, 30 people will work in this area starting Monday. Some of the new staff had been relocated internally. For example, the RAV, where consultations are only made by phone. “Many employees have also been hired,” said Bucherer. And they have to work overtime, albeit en masse. Bucherer says he temporarily set maximum work hours at 48 hours a week. There is no weekend job like at the beginning of the crisis. “We are not in a sprint, but in a marathon. For that we have to divide our forces well ».
Not even billed in March
One problem that WAS Wira is struggling with is the incorrect documentation submitted by the companies involved. This creates “enormous additional effort and delays in paying the funds,” Bucherer said. Typical errors include incorrect or missing payment details, missing wage diaries, or time records. “In such cases, we have to contact the companies, which takes a long time,” says Bucherer.
According to Gaudenz Zemp, director of the Lucerne SME and Trade Association (KGL), “about 60 percent of the accounts are incorrect.” This week, all members of the canton’s largest business association have been briefed once again on how documents are properly presented. Zemp says these errors are “very annoying” because they lead to massive delays in payments.
Gaudenz Zemp, Director of the Lucerne SME and Trade Association
As of April 29, 1,400 of the 3,686 invoices submitted had been processed. March declarations should be ready by May 15 and April declarations by the end of May. That means: companies are expecting a lot of money. So far, WAS wira has paid over CHF 21 million. Martin Bucherer expects a total of “60 to 80 million francs per month”.
Bankruptcies are likely to increase massively
Employees are not directly affected by late payments. Money flows to companies, which in turn are responsible for paying wages. If a company is waiting for money and is having trouble paying wages, it can apply for a special loan as part of the federal program, says Martin Bucherer. The WAS wira also provides advances in emergency situations. “Usually they are processed in two days,” Bucherer said. The prerequisite is that all documents are available. Until now, one had to resort to this remedy in 10 to 20 cases.
The agency head is convinced that working for a short time in the crown crisis is a “key factor in preventing many layoffs.” However, the number of job seekers has increased. As of April 29, 8,300 people were looking for work. That’s 1,500 more than the same day last year. KGL director Gaudenz Zemp assumes that this number will increase, albeit with a delay:
“As soon as short-term work no longer works, unemployment will rise.”
Short-term work in itself creates problems: “It only compensates 80 percent of wages. This has a dramatic impact on consumer behavior. There is no money to spend. As a result, the companies lacked sales, would not invest, which in turn affects other companies that would have benefited from these investments. “There’s a whole rat tail,” says Zemp.
If the markets do not recover quickly, he expects “bankruptcies due to the crown crisis to increase massively.” Zemp names the event industry, which has no revenue before a summer. He also expects “a huge cleanup” in the catering sector, because half of the businesses had barely survived even before Corona.
