Securitas accused of 20,000 Swiss labour-law breaches

SRF Investigativ counted around 20,000 alleged Labour Act breaches at Securitas over three years. Its analysis of internal company data covers 2023 to 2025 and points to about 900 employees affected by excessively long shifts and inadequate rest periods.

The allegations concern Switzerland’s largest security services provider, whose staff are deployed at sites including prisons, hospitals and asylum seeker centres. The reported figures describe alleged breaches identified in the data, not a finding by a court or regulator. Securitas disputes the total and says it has not committed a general, systematic breach of the law.

The scale and duration of the alleged pattern have drawn scrutiny from labour-law specialists. Denis G. Humbert told SRF the practices suggested systematic problems and called for authorities to intervene. Kurt Pärli, a law professor at the University of Basel, also said the findings could not be written off as a simple scheduling error.

Securitas has acknowledged that some practices did not align with labour-law principles or its own values. The company says measures introduced in recent years have reduced problematic cases. Its response leaves the central disagreement over the reported tally unresolved.

The reported problems centred on shifts that ran too long and rest periods that fell short. SRF Investigativ’s analysis identified those as the main issues among the alleged breaches recorded from 2023 to 2025.

About 900 employees were reportedly affected. The people concerned were said to work in prisons, hospitals and asylum seeker centres, settings where security staff provide services at institutions with round-the-clock operations. The findings place working-time practices across these assignments under scrutiny, while the published account does not break down the alleged breaches by workplace or year.

The figures represent a large number of incidents relative to the reported number of employees, but they do not establish that every affected worker faced the same pattern. Nor do they show how many breaches involved a particular shift or rest period. What they do indicate is that SRF’s analysis found repeated instances across a three-year span, rather than a single isolated episode.

That distinction matters for understanding the allegations. The reported total counts alleged breaches; the figure of 900 refers to employees said to be affected. Securitas contests the total number, while conceding that some practices did not meet labour-law principles or company values.

Two labour-law experts told SRF that the alleged pattern raised concerns beyond ordinary scheduling mistakes. Denis G. Humbert, a lawyer specialising in labour law, described the reported practices as a sign of systematic conduct and called on the authorities to intervene.

Humbert said: “It is not permissible, it is unacceptable. This constitutes the exploitation of staff and is not allowed.” His comments were an assessment of the reported findings, not a legal ruling.

Kurt Pärli, a professor of law at the University of Basel, also rejected the idea that the situation could be explained as a simple planning error. He said: “The problem with this situation goes far beyond that.” The experts’ remarks put the scale and recurrence of the alleged breaches at the centre of the debate over Securitas’s working-time practices.

The allegations concern compliance with the Labour Act, while the company maintains that there has been no general and systematic breach. The figures reported by SRF and Securitas’s response therefore leave distinct issues to resolve: how the internal data was counted, how widely the practices occurred, and whether the alleged breaches warrant action by authorities.

Securitas accepts that some practices fell short of labour-law principles and the company’s values. In a written statement, the firm said measures taken in recent years had reduced problematic cases. It nevertheless disputes SRF Investigativ’s figure of around 20,000 alleged breaches and rejects the claim that the company committed a general, systematic violation of the Labour Act.

The response acknowledges non-compliant practices in some cases while challenging the scale and characterization of the findings. That distinction is central to the dispute: SRF’s analysis points to repeated alleged breaches affecting about 900 employees over three years, while Securitas says the overall count is wrong and denies a company-wide pattern.

Humbert called for authorities to intervene, but the published accounts contain no announcement of an official investigation or finding. The allegations now put scrutiny on both the internal data and the company’s stated efforts to reduce problematic cases. Any assessment of the claims will need to address the alleged shift lengths, rest periods and frequency of the recorded incidents.

For workers at the institutions named in the findings, the issue is whether scheduling practices comply with labour law in day-to-day operations. Securitas’s admission and its denial of systematic breaches mark the boundaries of the current public dispute.