Tag Archives: Human interest

This week, Switzerland’s parliament voted in favour of raising the official retirement age for women. © Lightfieldstudiosprod | Dreamstime.comIn Switzerland, the retirement age for women has long been 64, one year less than the retirement age of 65 for men, according to RTS. The parliamentary vote, of 124 versus 69 in favour, follows a vote in the upper house that also favoured the change. Opposition from politicians on the left was insufficient to prevent the recent parliamentary...

Statistics from Switzerland’s Federal Statistical Office show a dramatic fall in the number of crimes during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020. © Releon8211 | Dreamstime.comAcross all of 2020, 421,678 crimes were recorded, 2.4% fewer than the year before. Drug crimes (-9%), immigration crimes (-12%) and burglaries (-10%) were all down. At the same time violent crimes rose 3%, in particular serious acts of violence (+9%), which were driven up by suicide attempts (+22%), rape (+5%)...

Today, figures on Swiss unemployment at the end of 2020 were published. © Tero Vesalainen | Dreamstime.comAt the end of December 2020, there were 163,545 people registered as unemployed in Switzerland, a figure 39.5% higher than at the end of 2019. At 31 December 2020, the number of job seekers was 260,318, a number 34.9% above the same figure at the end of 2019. The last time the number of job seekers was close to this high in Switzerland was at the end of February 1997, when it...

[embedded content] Production has been stepped up at a company in eastern Switzerland that makes breathing machines, as health services struggle to help a growing number of coronavirus patients. Switzerland is one of the countries most affected by the virus, with more than 17,800 positive tests and more than 488 deaths. There are 82 intensive care units, which have a total of 950-1,000 beds; around 850 of these are equipped with respirators. The army has around 100...

A commission of the Council of States, Switzerland’s upper house, is in favour of new rules to protect whistleblowers. © Shawn Hempel | Dreamstime.comThe proposed rules, which would help to protect those who expose secretive information or activity that is deemed illegal or unethical, were supported by 6 commission votes to 2 with 4 abstentions. The proposal, which would be incorporated into employment law, would follow the cascade principle put forward by the Federal Council,...

© Katarzyna Bialasiewicz | Dreamstime.com In Switzerland, some married couples pay more tax than unmarried ones, something referred to as the marriage tax penalty. The issue has been doing the rounds of the halls of Switzerland’s government for around 30 years. On 28 February 2016, a vote to change the current system was narrowly rejected by 50.8% of voters. Then in April 2019, the result of this referendum was reversed by the Federal Tribunal, Switzerland’s highest...

In Switzerland, some married couples pay more tax than unmarried ones, something referred to as the marriage tax penalty. © Katarzyna Bialasiewicz | Dreamstime.comThe issue has been doing the rounds of the halls of Switzerland’s government for around 30 years. On 28 February 2016, a vote to change the current system was narrowly rejected by 50.8% of voters. Then in April 2019, the result of this referendum was reversed by the Federal Tribunal, Switzerland’s highest court, due to a...

Next Friday, 14 June 2019, women across Switzerland plan to go on strike as part of a global movement calling for gender equality and an end to violence against women. Source: Facebook – grevefeministe Over the last 10 years, an average of 25 people have been killed annually as a result of domestic violence in Switzerland. 75% of the victims were women or girls. Women are more likely than men to be victims of other more prevalent forms of domestic violence too, and foreign women and girls in...

Growing old is something that happens to nearly all of us. However, according to a recent study close to one in three people (28%) reported age-related discrimination in Switzerland in 2017. © Photovs | Dreamstime.com The rate of age discrimination (28%) is higher than sexism (22%) and racism (12%), according to Christian Maggiori, a professor focused on social work interviewed by the newspaper La Liberté. Maggiori thinks the high incidence of agism could be partly explained by a lack laws...

A recently published study ranks Switzerland 10th on gender pay gap. Switzerland’s gap of 17% is bigger than Italy’s (5.3%), Luxembourg’s (5.5%), Belgium’s (6.1%), Sweden’s (13.3%), Spain’s (14.2%), Denmark’s (15%), France’s (15.2%) or the Netherlands’ (15.6%), but lower than Finland’s (17.4%), Portugal’s (17.5%), Austria’s (20.1%), the UK’s (21%) or Germany’s (21.5%). © Andrii Yalanskyi | Dreamstime.com Confusion around aggregate pay gap figures leads some to conclude women are getting paid...