The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the very precarious situation of the independents. Despite numerous measures announced by the Confederation last Wednesday to limit losses, the latter still has no concrete solutions for several thousand of them.
“Most of the individuals I had to go to for a construction site have canceled”
Currently, if you are self-employed, you can receive the loss of earnings allowance in four different situations: if you have children under the age of 12 whose care cannot be provided by a third party, if you are placed in quarantine, if your activity has been stopped following orders made by the Federal Council and if you are an independent artist whose commitments have been canceled or who had to cancel his own events.
All the independents who do not fit into these boxes are left without any state aid. This is the case of Yannick Reigner, a flooring installer in Lausanne. “Most of the individuals I had to go to for a site have canceled. Ditto for the managers who employed me, everything is suspended until the end of the crisis. Financially, I can last another month, after that it will become very complicated. I just wish we were all in the same boat … “he says, disillusioned.
The building trades do not currently meet the conditions laid down by the Federal Council, since they have no formal ban on continuing to work. And they are not alone. In reality, out of the 330,000 freelancers in Switzerland, 270,000 cannot benefit from the loss of earnings compensation.
The Federal Social Insurance Office, in collaboration with the Federal Finance Administration and the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, therefore inherited the heavy task of defining solutions for this category of the population by Wednesday .
The other case concerns the self-employed who are forced to stop their activity by the Confederation. For example, hairdressers and beauticians, since the service they offer involves physical contact. If they do not already receive benefits from other social or private insurance, they can receive a loss of earnings allowance.
This compensation amounts to 80% of the average annual income from the activity subject to AVS contributions obtained before the start of the entitlement, with a ceiling set at 196 francs per day. This amount was calculated on the basis of an average monthly salary of 7350 francs (7350 x 0.8 / 30 = 196 francs / day). In the case of a hairdresser claiming to have earned 25,000 francs in 2019, the allowance paid by his compensation fund will be 55 francs per day.
A solution that is not really comfortable, as Julie *, an esthetician in Épalinges deplores: “According to our turnover, these allowances will barely suffice to pay our fixed costs. I don’t make millions from my business, and if I’m still short of 2,000 francs at the end of the month, nobody will give it to me. ”
The little bosses also find themselves in a precarious position. If their employees can claim partial unemployment, they will not be entitled to more than 3,320 francs per month. A decision they can hardly accept. The Fédération romande des entrepreneurs also deplores “partially” satisfactory measures and announces that it will continue to work with the authorities to obtain acceptable compensation justified by the exceptional situation.
Also read: Follow the situation of the Covid-19 pandemic in figures and graphs
Despite the urgency, it remains impracticable for the Confederation to grant all compensation in the form of contributions to lost funds. It will be difficult to prove and verify the damage suffered in light of the hundreds of thousands of potential claims.
This is a real headache for the government, and the first signals sent indicate that we are headed for a dead end. Will a temporary emergency aid fund be released or is the Confederation ready to take the risk of abandoning all these workers? We will find out on April 8.
Created: 05.04.2020, 7:49 p.m.
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