Swiss Court Rules In Favor Of Requiring Companies To Pay Rent For Employees Forced To Work From Home

Countries the world over are getting creative when it comes to putting forth ideas to help us all get through the coronavirus pandemic. In May, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern suggested the entire nation move to a four-day workweek to help bolster both employee productivity and to encourage local tourism with the extra day off. Now, a high court in Switzerland has reportedly ruled in favor of requiring companies to pay part of their employee’s rent if they work from home.

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According to the German-language newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, Switzerland’s top court ruled in favor of employees in a new case against a company that didn’t want to contribute to employees’ rent payments while they were expected to work from home.

As the website Swiss Info translated, in the case, the company argued that because it had not made any prior agreement with the employee ahead of the pandemic to pay rent it was under no obligation to pay for rent now. However, the court reportedly rejected the argument and even added that the employee could request retroactive payment.

According to Swiss Info, the judges estimated a monthly compensation of about $154 toward the employee’s rent was justified.

Thomas Geiser, a professor of labor law at the University of St. Gallen, told the paper that the verdict is not surprising, adding, “law obliges employers to reimburse their employees for all expenses incurred to carry out their work.” He added, the decision would only apply to those employees who work from home upon employer request.

While Switzerland appears to have work-from-home employees’ backs, it seems to be a mixed back for employees in the United States.

In May, The New York Times reported, Facebook will soon allow employees to work remotely forever. However, with the change, Facebook also announced it will introduce pay cuts to those who move out of more expensive cities and into cheaper suburbs.

“We’ll adjust salary to your location at that point,” Zuckerberg said in the meeting, saying it was a necessary move to account for taxes. “There’ll be severe ramifications for people who are not honest about this.”

However, on Tuesday, Google announced it’s giving employees a $1,000 allowance to cover equipment costs, including office furniture.

CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement, “Because we still expect that most Googlers will be largely working from home for the rest of this year, we’ll be giving each Googler an allowance of $1,000 USD, or the equivalent value in your country, to expense necessary equipment and office furniture.”

However, in an additional announcement, Google also told employees they could not expense food or gym costs while working from home, or even use leftover travel funds to donate to charity, despite employees getting many of these perks for free while working in the physical office.

Only time will tell which direction — the Google or Facebook route — other employers follow and just how many perks people around the world actually get to keep as we enter our new normal.

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