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Is your work suspended during the holidays? Here’s what you can do!

You can apply for earnings-related allowance from your unemployment fund if your work is contractually suspended over the holidays or you are laid off temporarily. This situation can arise for employees such as school counsellors whose work is suspended during school holidays.

In this case, the employment contract remains in force but the employee's obligation to work and the employer's obligation to pay wages are suspended.

Suspension must be agreed in the employment contract

  • You are not entitled to the allowance if the suspension is not agreed in the employment contract. The employment contract must include a provision for situations comparable to a temporary lay-off, unpaid holiday periods or the suspension of payment of wages or that the employer cannot offer work during the time period in question. 

    Please note that simply stating that "school working days are considered working days" does not entitle you to daily allowance for school holidays and that you need to send the Fund the relevant annex that is part of your employment contract.

  • If your employment contract does not include such a provision, you will need to send us the annex to your employment contract agreeing on these situations. The annex enters into force from the date of signing, and an annex that is signed afterwards cannot be taken into account when processing the application.
  • If your employer offers you other work during the temporary lay-off or suspension of work, you need to accept the work or you will lose your right to the daily allowance.

How to apply for daily allowance

  1. Register as an unemployed jobseeker at the TE Office.
  2. If you work full-time, send the fund your application for unemployment allowance retroactively for the lay-off period, along with your employment contract and annex (if agreed in the appendix) and the lay-off notice.
  3. If you work part-time, you have the opportunity to receive adjusted unemployment allowance. Send your application to the fund retroactively for the full calendar month and include your employment contract along with any annexes.
  4. In most cases, we receive information about your earnings directly from the Incomes Register. If your employer has not reported all information required by us in the Incomes Register, we will ask for the missing information.
  5. To speed up the processing of your application, we recommend that you include your payslips from the last six months or since your previous lay-off period. Also check what other attachments you need to send to the fund.