How do I calculate accrued vacation pay?

Visas, Permits, Passports and Naturalization
1
Hello everyone on this beautiful Monday.

I gave my notice at work, I had unused vacation and my employer told me that I would take some of the vacation and I would be paid for some of it. I have just received the money for the leave and it seems to be a small amount. I would like to check if everything is correct, but I cannot find out how to calculate vacation pay in Switzerland.

Can you help me?

2
Hello, and welcome to the Forum.

What does it say in your employment contract, about paid vacation?

3
If you are on 104000 a year, your allowance is 20 days and you've 5 days unpaid leave, then it goes something like this:

52 weeks in a year.

1 day = 104000 / 52 / 5 = 400 a day.

5 days holiday = 2000.

It's more complicated than that, but it should give you an idea.

4
My employer uses 22.5 days as average working days per month. From there we have the pay per day and its multiplied by the number of days they would pay you. Substract AHV etc.

5
Monthly salary / number of working hours per month gives you the hourly rate.

Number of days holidays left * working hours per day gives you the number of holiday hours.

Multiply these two numbers and you get the holiday pay.

You can also work with days. Standard is to use 21.75 days per month.

6
It'll always be less than you think.

7
To add to the above, don't expect your full year's vacation for this year to be paid out with whatever was left from the past.

If you get 20 days a year, that's roughly 1.67 days per month. You say the company paid you recently, so I'm guessing that you gave notice in January and your contract ended 30 April. So you've worked 4 months in 2022.

1.67 days x 4 months = 6.68 days for this year plus whatever days were left from the previous year.

If you are still serving your notice period the calculation would probably be different.

8
I found this calculation:

Full annual salary * / 12 / 21.7 x balance of holiday days

here:

https://www.guidechomage.ch/articles...e-courte-duree

But my ex-employer used this:

Full annual salary * / 12 / 30 x balance of holiday days

...and I don't understand why

9
Thank you all for the answers

10
That's false.

There's more than one generally used way to calculate the payout due, the one you mention appears to be most commonly used, though the divisor is often 260 (which is roughly equal to 12*21.7).

The simple way is to contact the "office de l'eĢconomie et du travail" (or similar) of the canton your employer is located in, and ask them to clarify things, ideally directly with the ex-employer (their statements carry a "tad" more weight than any layman's, their French is probably better as well). Personally, I'd ask them to check your entire employment, your employer will be aware that what they're trying is ... not what a fair and competent professional would do.

11

Thank you very much for the tip. Can you explain to me why there is more than one way of counting? Shouldn't it be legally defined how payout is to be calculated?

12
Valuation of time mainly depends on your contract. See here for some more examples on how to calculate.