Securitas allegedly violated labor law thousands of times

Context

TL;DR

• Approximately 20'000 alleged violations between 2023 and 2025
• Approximately 900 employees involved in Central Switzerland
• Shifts that are too long and rest periods that are too short
• Securitas disputes the total and denies systematic violations

Key facts

• Company → Securitas
• Area → Central Switzerland
• Period → 2023-2025
• Alleged violations → about 20'000
• Employees involved → about 900
• Jobs listed → prisons, hospitals and asylum centers
• Analysis → internal data examined by SRF Investigativ
• Date → October 19, 2026, update 08:08

On October 19, 2026, an analysis of internal data conducted by SRF Investigativ reported approximately 20'000 alleged violations of labor law between 2023 and 2025. The count reportedly concerned about 900 Securitas employees in Central Switzerland.

According to the account, the main problems involved excessively long shifts and insufficient rest periods. The employees involved were reportedly assigned mainly to prisons, hospitals and asylum centers. For years, the Swiss security company allegedly made its staff work for too long and too often. The experts who spoke to SRF Investigativ described the situation as a systematic violation of labor law.

The experts' assessments

“This is an expression of systematic behavior,” Denis G. Humbert, a lawyer specializing in labor law, told SRF, urging the authorities to intervene.

Kurt Pärli, a law professor at the University of Basel, agreed with this interpretation. According to the report, the scale can no longer be explained by a planning error and goes far beyond that.

The first aspect to distinguish is the numerical scale indicated by the analysis: about 20'000 alleged violations and about 900 people involved. The second concerns the nature of the allegations, which focused on shifts and rest periods. The source does not provide a breakdown by individual employee or by individual facility. The fact that the figure is associated with Central Switzerland delineates the geographical scope referred to by the analysis, which is not presented as a count relating to other areas.

Operational details

Data, assessments and company response

The most significant aspect of the case is not just the figure cited by SRF Investigativ, but the gap between three different levels: the analysis of internal data, the experts' assessment and Securitas's response. Keeping them separate makes it possible to correctly understand what is being contested and what the company acknowledges.

The comparison between analysis and Securitas's response

The comparison shows that the admission of partial non-compliance does not coincide with acceptance of the overall count. Securitas acknowledges that part of the practice did not comply with the principles of labor law and internal values, but disputes both the figure of approximately 20'000 violations and the characterization of the violations as overall and systematic.

The two main figures also describe different quantities. The approximately 20'000 alleged violations represent the disputed phenomenon, while the approximately 900 employees indicate the people who would have been involved. The text does not make it possible to establish how many violations were associated with each employee, nor whether they all worked in the same places or faced the same shifts.

The same caution applies to the areas indicated. The source cites prisons, hospitals and asylum centers as places where the employees would have been deployed in particular; it does not present that list as a complete breakdown of Securitas's activities. The data therefore make it possible to link the dispute to those three areas, but not to automatically extend it to every facility or site of the company.

The documented picture therefore remains a comparison between an internal analysis, professional assessments and a company response. The source does not report a definitive finding by the authorities that resolves the divergence between these positions.

Key points

What remains documented and what remains open

A limited admission, not an agreement on the count

In its written response to SRF, Securitas admitted that part of the practice did not comply with the principles of labor law and its own internal values. According to the company, the measures adopted would have helped reduce violations in recent years.

The same statement, however, contains a clear dispute over the overall figure. Securitas says it is unable to understand the number of approximately 20'000 violations, does not rule out the presence of errors, and emphasizes that, overall, there would not have been systematic violations of labor law. The text thus brings together a partial admission and a rejection of the overall interpretation attributed to the analysis.

The limits of the available picture

The source does not explain how the alleged violations were counted, how they were distributed across individual years, or which employees and facilities were associated with each episode. Nor does it indicate which specific provisions of labor law would have been violated, which thresholds the shifts would have exceeded, or how short the recovery periods would have been.

There is also no quantification of the decrease attributed to the measures adopted. Securitas speaks of a reduction in recent years, but the text provides neither before-and-after figures nor an indication of when the measures would have been implemented. It is therefore not possible to describe the development of the phenomenon with numbers on the basis of the material reported.

The available chronology is precise only in part: the analysis concerns the period 2023-2025, while the article is dated October 19, 2026, with an update at 08:08. The lawyer Denis G. Humbert requested the intervention of the authorities, but the source does not report any possible follow-up, nor does it cite inspections, decisions, or sanctions.

The conditional formulations present in the text, such as would have, alleged, there would be, and would be, delimit the status of the report: these are allegations based on an analysis and accompanied by experts’ assessments, not a definitive outcome documented in the source. What remains verifiable is the contrast between the count reported by SRF Investigativ and Securitas’s reply; further details to resolve it are not documented.

Source: tio.ch