Voluntary overtime : Increase of quota to 120 hours per calendar year

In CBA no. 129, the National Labour Council has raised the quota for voluntary overtime from 100 hours to 120 hours per calendar year.

The system of voluntary overtime (Art. 25bis Labour Act) entails that the employee wishing to do so and whom the employer asks to do overtime, can do so for a limited quota of 100 hours of overtime per calendar year. This quota can be increased to a maximum of 360 hours by a CBA declared generally binding. In our newsletter of March 2017 we elaborated on the system of voluntary overtime.

With CBA no. 129, the quota for voluntary overtime is now increased to 120 hours per calendar year for all companies in the private sector. This new quota does not influence already existing industry-level CBAs with a higher quota. It also remains possible for the industries to further raise the quota to maximum 360 hours per calendar year via a CBA declared generally binding.

The CBA still needs to be declared generally binding, but this is in practice only a formality.

> Action point

Henceforth it is possible to have employees who are willing to do so perform up to maximum 120 voluntary overtime hours per calendar year. In your industry, a higher quota, up to 360 hours, can be determined by CBA. Always verify this; we can also help you with this.