Around 40 companies have submitted applications for short-time work in the Swiss watchmaking Jura canton in recent weeks, Pierre-Alain Berret, head of the Jura Chamber of Commerce, tells Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
Mr Berret says that there has been a sharp rise in requests to cut working hours this summer.
Applications are coming from equipment, tools and component manufacturers that supply both the large industrialised groups and Switzerland’s legions of independent watchmakers, the NZZ report says.
Gilles Coullery from Jura’s Office for Economy and Employment, confirmed the spike in companies looking cut costs.
“It is still too early to give clear figures, but around 40 companies with around 2,000 employees have applied for short-time work,” he says, but clarifies that
What is short-time working?
In Switzerland, if a company has to temporarily cease operations or reduce working hours for reasons such as a downturn in the economy, it can apply to introduce short-time working, which authorities approve when it avoids employees having to be laid off.
Canton-level institutions, such as the Jura Office for Economy and Employment will pay an employer 80% of any lost earnings for their employees, who might have their working weeks halved. The remainder of each short-time worker’s salary has to be made up by the employer.
Exports of Swiss watches have dropped by around 3% in the first half of 2024, with the downturn accelerating to -7% in June.
The biggest manufacturers have said they will reduce production capacity but not make redundancies of highly trained, and hard to find, watchmakers, even if this hurts profit margins during the current downturn.
NZZ describes the actions of two companies in the supply chain.
Recomatic, which makes industrial machines for the watch industry, sent 20% of its 140 employees on short-time work in June. Full-time work is expected to resume in July and August, but short-time work may be introduced again in September.
Watch case manufacturer Louis Lang, based in Porrentruy, close the French border in the Jura mountains, has 550 employees and plans to temporarily suspend production at the beginning of September without losing its team.