Shops open twelve Sundays a year: the plan is on the table
Published
The federal consultation opens with the idea of increasing the number of Sundays on which shops can open from four to twelve. The cantons will have autonomy.
Often, there are not many souls living on Sundays in the shopping streets, like here in Flon in Lausanne.
Anyone who has ever set foot in the Migros at Geneva train station on a Sunday knows that there is demand for shopping seven days a week. Parliament is sensitive to this, even if it is not ready to generalize Sunday openings. On Friday, the Economic Affairs Committee of the Council of States completed its work and opened the official consultation on a simple idea: increase from four to twelve the number of Sundays per year on which cantons can allow stores to open.
For the majority of the Commission, it is necessary to "strengthen shopping as a vibrant leisure activity." But above all, it is necessary to resolve a competitive bias. Let's return to our Migros at Geneva station: why can it open and not the others? Why can we shop online on Sundays but not in stores? And why can stores open in Zermatt, Interlaken, or other tourist spots but not in major cities?
The federal project, initiated by the Canton of Zurich, only seeks to increase the limit set for cantons. They will be able to increase the number of Sundays open from four to twelve. They are free to do so or not, and to set the hours. "This is a moderate relaxation, with a federalist character," the commission says.
For the rest, the rules of the labor law will apply. For example, if you work on Sundays, you must have a day off the following week. And since we are still in the realm of occasional openings and not every Sunday, it remains prescribed that someone cannot work two Sundays in a row. Finally, the provision of the labor law that states that you cannot impose Sunday work on an employee who refuses it remains in force. As for whether, in practice, this is always respected, that is another story.
A minority of the Commission opposes this proposal. "Sundays off work strengthen social cohesion and should not be used to stimulate consumption," she says. If the bill were to pass anyway, she would like to add a condition: opening only if the sector has a collective labor agreement at the federal or cantonal level. "This would ensure that extending Sunday openings does not undermine employee protection and would strengthen the principle of social partnership, which has proven its worth," she believes.
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