Temporary agency workers often look for work in various industries, staying only for a short time in one company, or lack the necessary resources to finance training on their own. To tackle this, Swissstaffing created a training fund together with the trade unions. Every agency worker that has worked over four months is entitled to a CHF 4,000 (approx. €3,500) training voucher. To compensate the loss of income during training hours, the worker is also entitled to get up to CHF 2,000 (approx. €1.800) as training allowance. The bipartite training fund has an annual budget of CHF 16 million (approx. €12.5 million). 7,544 workers used the fund to access skilling and training in 2017.
The challenge
Temporary agency workers often face challenges in accessing the training they need. They change the sector they work in, stay only for a short time in a company or lack the necessary resources to finance training on their own.
Solution
Swiss trade unions and employers in the agency work sector set up a training fund, "TempTraining", through a Collective Labour Agreement which has been declared binding by the federal government. It is therefore applicable to all agency work companies active in the country.
After working a certain amount of time, agency workers are entitled to get up to CHF 4,000 as training allowance. They can freely choose among an offer of more than 800 schools across Switzerland, no matter their professional background, which therefore enables them to retrain in a completely different trade and improves their employability.
Since workers do not work during the period of training, they are also entitled to up to CHF 2,000 in compensation for the missed working hours. The working time necessary to be eligible for the training allowance is calculated by adding up the hours registered over the different missions and staffing agencies of the last 12 months.
Key numbers
7544
workers trained in 2017
Resources
Country/ies of implementation
Partners
- Trade unions (Unia, Syna, Angestellte Schweiz, KV Schweiz)