Can I turn down a job assigned to me by the RAV?

When an assigned job counts as unsuitable

Under AVIG art. 16. If none of these applies the job counts as suitable, and refusing it brings suspension days. As of 7 September 2026.

The criteria one by one

The first criterion is standard working conditions. A job that falls below what is customary for the place and sector — on working hours, safety, or compliance with an applicable collective agreement — is one you do not have to accept. This is the provision that stops unemployment insurance pushing people into bad jobs.

The second is adequate regard for your skills and your previous work. The qualification matters: this criterion does not apply to people under 30. If you are young, you must therefore also accept work outside your field or below your qualification level, provided the other criteria are met.

The third is your personal circumstances: age, health and family situation. The most common grounds in practice sit here — a health limitation that rules out a particular activity, or caring duties that clash with the working hours. Both must be substantiated, not merely asserted.

The fourth concerns re-entry: a job that significantly hinders your return to your profession is unsuitable. That does not mean any detour, but employment that damages your professional continuity.

The fifth is the pay floor: work paying less than 70 percent of insured earnings counts as unsuitable, unless compensation is provided.

Why the line sits at 70 percent

The figure looks arbitrary but is not. The daily allowance is 70 percent of insured earnings in most cases. A job paying less than 70 percent would therefore leave you worse off than the insurance does — accepting it would be economically irrational, and so it is not required.

This is also where interim earnings come in. Take a job below your previous salary and, under certain conditions, the insurance compensates part of the difference. That is exactly what the qualification "unless compensation is provided" targets: with compensation, a job that is nominally underpaid can become suitable.

So do not reckon with the gross salary of the new job alone, but with what is left at the end. A job below your old level is often better with interim earnings than continuing to wait, and it counts as contribution time at the same time.

And note what insured earnings are: your previous salary, capped at the top. If you earned very well, have the floor calculated concretely rather than estimating it — the difference between 70 percent of actual and 70 percent of insured earnings can be considerable.

How to go about it properly

Talk to your adviser before refusing. An assignment arises from a profile the two of you maintain together; if that profile no longer fits, the assignment is the symptom, not the problem. A conversation about workload, region, health limitations or caring duties prevents the next five unsuitable assignments.

Never turn the company down without involving the RAV. From the insurance's point of view, the refusal is the event that triggers a sanction — even when you had good reasons, if they are recorded nowhere.

Document the reason while it can still be substantiated. A medical certificate, a childcare arrangement, evidence of the assigned job's working hours: what exists in writing is taken into account; what you recount usually is not.

And when in doubt, go to the interview. Attending is not an acceptance — it is a documented job-search effort, and it clarifies questions about conditions and duties faster and more definitively than an argument about suitability in advance.

What refusing actually costs

Suspension days are not a warning but a cut in francs, calculated on insured earnings. The better you earned, the more each day costs — and they do not extend the benefit period, so they are a genuine loss.

The range of 1 to 60 days reflects the degree of fault. An understandable misjudgement is weighed differently from a refusal with no justification at all. Repeated refusals lead explicitly to longer suspensions.

There is also an effect that appears in no formal decision: your relationship with your adviser shapes which openings you get to see at all and which measures are available to you. A reasoned refusal, discussed beforehand, does not damage that relationship; a quiet no does.

Advisers have long pointed out that a large share of suspension days trace back to not knowing the rules rather than to unwillingness. That is where the cheapest lever sits: knowing the criteria before the first assignment arrives.

Why 'nothing was signed' changes nothing

The wording is short and therefore broad. A person is suspended who does not comply with the control requirements or the instructions of the competent authority, in particular by not accepting suitable work. The act describes an omission — not accepting — and attaches no form requirement to it. A verbal offer, a handshake at the end of the meeting, a confirmation by telephone: each of those can be not accepted, which is all the provision asks.

The opposite assumption is imported from contract law, where 'is this binding yet?' is a sensible question. Unemployment insurance does not ask it. It asks whether suitable work was within reach and whether the insured person let it pass — the frame is the duty to mitigate in Article 16(1), under which the insured person must in principle accept any work immediately.

So the question 'does that count as an offer yet?' is the wrong one. Everything turns on whether the position was suitable. If it was not, the form of the offer is irrelevant. If it was, the missing signature does not help.

The two pay tests, and the one that does not exist

Article 16(2) lists nine situations in which work is not suitable and therefore need not be accepted. Two of them concern pay, and they work in completely different ways.

Letter a measures the job against the market and against collective law: work is not suitable if it does not meet the conditions customary in the occupation and the locality, in particular those of an applicable collective agreement (GAV) or standard employment contract (NAV). The benchmark here is not what you used to earn but what the occupation and the region normally pay — and, where a collective agreement applies, its minimum terms. This is the provision an genuinely under-tariff wage fails.

Letter i measures the job against you, and was re-enacted with effect from 1 January 2026: work is not suitable if it earns the insured person less than 70 per cent of the insured earnings, unless the person receives compensatory payments under Article 24. The cantonal authority may, exceptionally and with the agreement of the tripartite commission, declare lower-paid work suitable.

What appears in neither test is the sector average. A wage can sit below the average and still be customary for the occupation and the place; it can sit above the average and still fall short of 70 per cent of a high insured earnings figure. An argument built on the average misses both criteria.

Getting the terms in writing — and why the job market does not help

Both tests need an amount, a workload and a function. An offer in which the pay will be 'a bit below what is usual' and the training 'something we'll sort out informally' contains none of the three. It can be classified neither as suitable nor as unsuitable, and that state of affairs works against whoever leaves it unresolved: Article 17(3)(c) puts the duty to supply the documents for the suitability assessment on the insured person.

Missing figures are not the exception in this market but the rule. In the SwissJobs.app advert index, fewer than one advert in a hundred states an actual pay figure. Pay comes up as a subject at all in a little over six per cent, usually in a clause about benefits or the thirteenth month's salary. A workload as a percentage appears in a good quarter. Only the advert title and the editorial summary were searched, so the shares are a lower bound — but the order of magnitude is unambiguous.

For an assignment that has an uncomfortably concrete consequence: the number the suitability test depends on is in neither the advert nor a verbal offer. It comes into existence only when somebody asks for it. A draft contract, or an email confirming the key terms, is therefore not an act of distrust towards the employer — it is the document the procedure presupposes.

The second reason to have it in writing is the file. What you say in a meeting rarely reaches the record; what exists as a document is taken into account. Anyone recording their applications as they go already has the exchange logged with its date — the same record that later fills the monthly proof of job-search efforts.

What a refusal costs, and who decides it

Article 45(3) of the ordinance grades suspension by fault: 1 to 15 days for slight fault, 16 to 30 for medium fault, 31 to 60 for serious fault. Paragraph 4 of the same article removes the authority's discretion in two situations. Serious fault exists where, without a valid reason, the insured person gave up suitable employment without being assured of another, or refused suitable work.

Refused suitable work is therefore placed expressly in the top band — unlike, for instance, a labour market measure not taken up, which is not named there. The hinge is the 'valid reason': it is what moves a case out of the top band, and it has to be capable of proof.

Competence sits with the cantonal authority under Article 30(2), not with the unemployment fund; for the grounds in letters c, d and g it is the canton that decides. The suspension applies only to days on which the conditions of entitlement are met, counts against the maximum number of daily allowances, and runs to at most 60 days per ground; enforcement lapses if it has not taken place within six months of the suspension period starting (Article 30(3)). Repeated suspensions are extended accordingly, taking into account those of the last two years (Article 45(5) of the ordinance).

The suspension period starts on the first day after the act or omission for which it is imposed (Article 45(1)(b)). Where someone declines after the interview, that is the day of the refusal — not the day of the assignment and not the day of the decision.

If the decision has already been issued

A suspension is notified as a formal decision, and formal decisions can be challenged. Article 52 ATSG provides that an objection may be lodged within 30 days with the authority that issued the decision; the decision on the objection must give reasons and state the further remedies, and the objection procedure is free of charge.

In substance the argument is almost never about whether a refusal happened — that is usually undisputed — but about suitability and about the valid reason. Both are questions of fact, and both are decided on what is in the file: the draft contract or its absence, the medical certificate, evidence of the working hours, the counsellor's note of the conversation.

Sequence is therefore the real lever, and it is a matter of timing. What was clarified and recorded before the refusal is a basis; what is supplied afterwards is an explanation. The grounds of unsuitability are in the act so that they can be discussed — putting the question to your counsellor before declining is the step the procedure assumes and the one that cannot be taken later. The criteria themselves, and why the 70 per cent line sits where it does, are set out in the answer above on this page.

One point specific to readers who moved here from another market: this is not an at-will system in either direction. A public office can put a job in front of you, the refusal is an event on a file, and the cost is measured in daily allowances rather than in goodwill. That is unfamiliar to most people arriving, and it is the part worth reading before the first assignment rather than after it.