Laid off in Switzerland? What to do first.

If you’re reading this and have been recently laid off, don’t worry, you’re not alone. According to recent statistics, unemployment is the highest it has been in Switzerland since the 1990s. And due to a lag behind other economies, Switzerland’s job market isn’t forecast to improve until December 2010.

If you’re a foreigner in Switzerland, chances are you’re going to be let go first. From my experience, the RAV in my town is filled with people speaking High German and bad German, two give-aways that most of us newly unemployed are not Swiss.

Most contracts in Switzerland require employers to give their employees three-months notice upon terminating their employment. This sounds nice, but emotionally, it can be hard to keep working for a company after they’ve let you go—especially if you’re an American like me who isn’t used to the concept (to help you through the pain, read about how I survived my notice period or email me for audio files to a 4-part series I wrote and performed for World Radio Switzerland on being laid off, Swiss Style—yes, my first job after being laid off was to write about the experience).

Anyhow, here are the first five things you should do upon being laid off in Switzerland:

1. Take your official “laid off letter” to your local city hall. They will give you a piece of paper (stamped of course, the Swiss love stamps) that proves you are laid off. (Don’t ask me why the original letter isn’t proof).

2. Start looking for employment. If you can’t prove that you’ve been looking for work during your notice period then you can lose some of your unemployment benefits. (Note: to be eligible for benefits, typically you must have lived and worked in Switzerland for a certain amount of time…at least a year and possibly two. I don’t want to give specifics here for the chances of being wrong since all of these numbers depend on situations and permits). FYI, your current employer is legally required to give you time off for interviews and job hunting.

3. Get a Zeugnis (a reference letter) from your employer. They may let you write it yourself, and if so, learn the “code” words (i.e. use as many adjectives in a row as possible until it sounds utterly ridiculous and then you’ve probably got it right) so you can make sure you sound as great as possible (at least in Swiss terms—I would never show this letter to an American employer—it sounds way too over the top to be real…hmm but then again that sounds like most of Swiss life).

4. Register at your local RAV. You must do this before the first day of
official unemployment. Brace yourself for huge piles of paperwork in a language other than your own. At my RAV, no one speaks English, so maybe you’ll be more fortunate. You must bring the paperwork talked about in #1 as well as your CV, Diplomas, ATM card, Zeugnis, and Permit.

5. Register at the ALK (the RAV will give you these forms after you do point #4).

Pray that unlike me, you fill out all the million forms correctly and actually start getting unemployment checks for your efforts. But if you don’t, look on the bright side, your vocabulary will really improve fast.

Good luck. If you have questions, comments, or something you’d like to know more about on the topic of unemployment in Switzerland leave them below and I’ll do my best to answer or create new posts based on them.

Stay tuned for Part 2 next week, How to Find a Job in Switzerland.