Scandalized by the obligation to stamp before going to the toilet, State Councilor Céline Vara (Green/NE) intends to put an end to this measure in force in several watchmaking companies by tinkering with the law, RTS learned.
The affair of stamping toilet breaks revealed two weeks ago by RTS is taking a political turn. Neuchâtel senator Céline Vara announced it on Sunday in the program Mise au Point: she intends to stop this practice which she considers “aberrant”.
“It is important for me that the Legal Affairs Committee of the Council of States, on which I am fortunate to sit, quickly takes up this issue. We will have to examine whether or not there is a gap in the law, as the Neuchâtel Cantonal Court says. If this is indeed the case, we will then have to legislate and not wait years for this question to be clarified,” she explains.
Legal vacuum
In the eyes of the court, there is a legal vacuum. He said it very clearly in his judgment which is so controversial. “The notion of break is not clearly defined in the law […] This is a shortcoming strictly speaking, in the sense that the legislator abstained from resolving a point when he should have done so,” he wrote in his decision.
For the Neuchâtel judges, nothing prevents a company from forcing its employees to stamp the passages in the small corner. “We are faced with a case of practically inhumanity. Man and woman have needs: to eat, to sleep and to relieve themselves in the toilet. How can we require a human to work eight hours a day without satisfying their needs? It’s still very questionable,” says Céline Vara.
>> Read also: Stamping employees who go to the toilet is legal
“Very controlling management”
For the record, the Neuchâtel court decision follows a three-year standoff between the Singer factory and the Office of Relations and Working Conditions. In 2021, during a Covid check in the company, a labor inspector chanced upon an employee stamping his way to the toilet.
For the Office of Labor Relations and Conditions (ORCT), this is a first. He has never been confronted with such a case and he decides to take action. “We started from the principle that physiological needs cannot be deducted from working time, because they are independent of the person’s will,” explains the head of the ORCT Fabienne Cosandier in Mise au Point.
“This management, which can seem very controlling, can put pressure on employees. There is then a general risk for the health of employees because we know very well that a human being cannot function continuously under pressure .”
Countering abuse
Contacted by RTS, the boss of Singer declined our interview request. But in the columns of Le Temps, he explains that this measure was introduced around thirty years ago by his father following abuse. “When offices and workshops became non-smoking, those who smoked had to take a break outside. But the alternative that some found was to smoke in the toilets […] It was therefore decided to stamp all the breaks.”
Fabiano Citroni, RTS Investigation Department
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