Facts
The case concerns an unemployed person who was temporarily unable to work or only partially able to work and employable due to illness, accident or maternity, and therefore wanted to assert their claim for daily allowance. According to Art. 28 Paras. 1 and 3 AVIG, such unemployed persons are entitled to the full daily allowance, but only after a waiting period of one week, except in cases of maternity, accident or hospitalization. The Federal Council has further specified in Art. 42 Paras. 1 and 2 AVIV that the unemployed person must report their incapacity for work to the employment office within one week of its onset. If they report it without a valid excuse, they have no entitlement to the daily allowance for the days before the report.
Considerations
The Federal Court considers this one-week deadline for reporting incapacity for work to be lawful. It is not merely an administrative regulation, but a formal prerequisite for the claim, the non-observance of which leads to the forfeiture of the daily allowance claim for the days before the report. This regulation serves to prevent abuse and ensure control by the authorities, which is objectively justified.
The Federal Court points out that the law in Art. 28 AVIG represents an exception to the basic principle of unemployment insurance, according to which benefits are only considered if the…