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By Imogen Foulkes
BBC News, Geneva
Geneva is a really rich place. Home to an enormous personal banking sector, the United Nations, and public sale homes Sotheby’s and Christie’s, which recurrently promote monumental gem stones for eye-watering costs.
And this month it’s introducing the highest minimum month-to-month wage in the world, in response to a referendum at the finish of September.
The new hourly fee of 23 Swiss francs – equal to £19, $25 or €22 – will give a minimum month-to-month wage of 4,000 francs (£3,350).
Why the want?
This Swiss canton could also be wealthy however additionally it is house to tens of 1000’s of resort employees, waiters, cleaners and hairdressers who wrestle to make ends meet.
When Switzerland went into lockdown final March, photographs of traces of individuals at meals banks in Geneva made headlines.
In reality, the meals banks existed earlier than the pandemic, and they’re nonetheless there months after the lockdown ended.
Charly Hernandez’s charity Colis du Coeur distributes 1000’s of luggage of groceries per week at one meals financial institution in the metropolis centre. The traces are lengthy, most of the individuals queuing are girls, a lot of them have younger kids.
BBC
Switzerland is a really wealthy nation. But there are round 600,000 poor in a inhabitants of 8.5 million. That’s not nothing
Isn’t 4,000 francs a month an excessive amount of?
It might sound rather a lot, however provided that you do not stay in Geneva, Charly explains.
“A single room is 1,000 francs a month, if you can survive on 500 francs a month for food you’re a very good manager, health insurance is 550 a month per person. If you are a family with two kids, you barely scrape by.”
The new minimum wage will make a distinction to many individuals, like Ingrid, who’ve been going to the meals financial institution.
“At the end of the month my pockets are empty,” she says. “This [food bank] has been great, because you have a week of food. A week of relief.”
Even a few of the volunteers, like Laura, discover Geneva’s value of residing tough. On her nurse’s wage, she will be able to’t actually afford a spot of her personal in the metropolis.
“I would be living in a very small place, in one room. So I still live with my family. I’m 26,” she says.
Who pays?
Businesses providing lower than 23 francs an hour will now have to provide workers a pay rise. To need to bear this new value in the center of the Covid pandemic and a drastic drop in income may trigger extra hurt than good, fears Vincent Subilia of Geneva’s Chamber of Commerce.
“Hotels, restaurants, these are areas which are already confronted with major challenges due to the pandemic,” he says. “This could potentially jeopardise the very existence of these sectors.”
One restaurateur, Stefano Fanari, informed Swiss tv he didn’t assume he would be capable of foot the invoice. As the head chef, his month-to-month wage averages between 5,000 and 6,000 francs a month.
“How can I continue when I have to pay the dish washers that much?
“Should I reduce their hours? Don’t get me unsuitable, I’m not towards somebody incomes 4,000 a month. But there is a level the place we simply cannot pay that. I’ve sacrificed, I work 12 hours a day right here. What ought to I do?”
So what occurs now?
Geneva’s minimum wage came into law not because the government imposed it, but because Geneva citizens proposed it as a “individuals’s initiative”. They gathered enough signatures to call a referendum on the issue, and on 27 September voters said yes, by a pretty overwhelming 58% to 42%.
Switzerland’s system of direct democracy means the voters have the final say, so the minimum wage is now obligatory.
Often, Swiss citizens tend to vote very cautiously when it comes to spending public money. But on the same day they also backed the nationwide introduction of two weeks’ paid paternity leave.
For Charly Hernandez these moves are positive signs that, especially in such difficult times, people in this largely wealthy country are looking out for one another.
“They voted for it, and I’m elated. We do have a really direct democracy that’s nice, however what many individuals do not know is that most individuals’s initiatives get turned down.
“It’s exceptional that things get approved, so I believe things are improving… OK at a slow pace, but that is the Swiss pace.”
The subsequent take a look at for voters will come later this month when the Swiss will resolve on a “responsible business initiative”.
That would require firms primarily based in Switzerland to take authorized and monetary accountability for human rights and environmental abuses proper alongside their provide chains, anyplace in the world.
A sure to that would value way over Geneva’s world-beating minimum wage.
More tales from our Switzerland correspondent
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