Child labour in Switzerland

Child labour in Switzerland was a fact in rural areas to the 1960s, at least tolerated by the Swiss authorities referring to the so-called Verdingkinder,[1] as up to 100,000 children were needed as cheap workers mostly on farms the decades before.

[3][4][5] As of the 2010s, the practice of Child labour in principle is still tolerated,[5] as at least small family-owned farms in Switzerland do need the help of their children on occasion of the harvests in late summer.

In the Swiss pre-industrial society, as well in other European countries, the children often were part of the family economy, earlier were integrated into the worker process and often indispensable contributed income.

Thus, the exploitation of the labor of children took new forms and extended dimensions, and spread at the beginning of the 19th century rapidly, particularly in the canton of Zurich and in Eastern Switzerland.

So there were no legal provisions, an attempt was made to limit child labour by the compulsory school law, however, it remained still widely used at the beginning of the 20th century, especially in the agriculture and the home work (contract, German: Verding).

The Federal law of 1938 (German: Bundesgesetz über das Mindestalter der Arbeitnehmer) increased the minimum age of workers to 15 years, and the Federal law of 1940 (German: Bundesgesetz über die Heimarbeit) forbade the awarding of an independent home work on children under the age of 15 years.