Tag Archives: Business & Economy

Swiss employee associations are not opposed to a 60 hour week. Several parliamentary initiatives aim to loosen Swiss labour rules. The first aims to allow staff and employers more flexibility regarding hours worked and time off. The second aims to loosen rules on recording hours of work by managers and specialists. Another initiative aims to extend this to include employees with shareholdings in start-ups. © Racorn | Dreamstime Employee associations think flexible hours across the course of a...

A report published by the head hunting firm Korn Ferry finds pay differences between men and women doing the same job are statistically insignificant. © Clementgreenberg | Dreamstime The report says that while it is true that, as a group, women get paid less than men, it is not because they receive less for the same work. It is because they don’t get the highest-paying jobs in the highest-paid industries. Korn Ferry’s number crunchers took pay data on more than 20 million employees across...

20 Minutes. A motion adopted by Switzerland’s parliament on 7 June 2017 proposes halting the import the meat of mistreated animals. The work of Matthias Aebischer, a socialist member from the canton of Bern, was originally focused on foie gras, frogs legs and fur, but there are now suggestions his motion might include animals slaughtered according to certain islamic and jewish rituals. © Balint Radu | Dreamstime According to the newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, Katharina Büttiker, the president of...

Would you eat balls made from insects? Last year the Swiss supermarket Coop applied for authorisation to sell insect based products. Then on 14 August 2017 it announced a limited number of its stores and its delivery service Coop@home would start selling the products from 21 August 2017, phasing the products in across other stores between August and the end of the year. Source: Coop.ch “We have been working on this project for a long time and the time has finally come. We are the first Swiss...

According to 20 Minutes, Jacques Bourgeois, the director of the Swiss Farmers’ Union, supports sanctioning farmers who fail to treat their animals properly by cutting the farm subsidies they receive from the Swiss government. © Kate Amiguet In 2015, producer support in Switzerland amounted to around 57% of farm revenues according to an OECD estimate. Swiss farm subsidies are second to only Norway’s and more than three times the OECD average. Bourgeois thinks the “black sheep” who disregard...

According to various newspapers, Swiss Rail placed an advert on a job portal at ETH, a university in Zurich, offering work to cunning vixens, “schlaue Füchsinnen” in German. © Denis Linine | Dreamstime Successful applicants need to dress up as foxes, including fox tails, and run around train stations with posters informing travellers of alternative train connections. 20 Minutes reported that a Swiss Rail spokesperson said that of course male foxes could also apply. The organisation Terre des...

If you have ever wondered how much employees in Switzerland get paid you can check with the online tool Salarium, created by the Swiss government. © Shaunwilkinson – Dreamstime The information is compiled from a database of numbers from a salary survey done in 2014. After entering five required bits of information: region, business sector, occupation, professional position and working hours, the tool calculates the gross monthly median salary and range. It can be further fined tuned with...

On 24 July 2017, the Swiss franc was 1.101 to the euro. One week later on 31 July 2017 it was 1.145, according to Bloomberg. Over the month it dropped from 1.095 to 1.145, a drop Reuters described as the biggest monthly drop in six years. © Wirojsid | Dreamstime The Swiss National Bank (SNB) has been working hard to bring down the value of the Swiss franc. Speaking to the newspaper Le Temps last week, SNB president Thomas Jordan described the currency as “significantly overvalued”. But why...

On 24 July 2017, the Swiss franc was 1.101 to the euro. One week later on 31 July 2017 it was 1.145, according to Bloomberg. Over the month it dropped from 1.095 to 1.145, a drop Reuters described as the biggest monthly drop in six years. © Wirojsid | Dreamstime The Swiss National Bank (SNB) has been working hard to bring down the value of the Swiss franc. Speaking to the newspaper Le Temps last week, SNB president Thomas Jordan described the currency as “significantly overvalued”. But why...

A recent report by the Reuters Institute shows a fall in trust in news media in Switzerland. They survey shows that only 46% trust news overall. This is down 4% compared to the year before. The report suggests this is an effect of the debate around ‘fake news’ resulting from the presidential election in the US, a subject that dominated Swiss media at the time. © Pressureua | Dreamstime Despite the recent fall, Swiss confidence in news media is above the average of the 36 countries covered –...