Switzerland Today
Greetings from Bern,
Here are the latest news and stories doing the rounds in Switzerland on Friday, January 7.
In the News: a setback for Uber, a good year for the Swiss job market and the SNB.
Zurich is the latest canton to rule that Uber drivers are not independent workers. In a verdict that unions say will have a wider impact for ‘gig economy’ workers, the court said Uber was bound to pay social security contributions for its drivers, as they would for regular employees. Uber said the decision did not take into account the fact that most of its drivers in Switzerland (there are around 3,000) want to remain independent. Several similar legal cases are pending this year.
The Swiss job market weathered the pandemic well in 2021. Latest statistics from the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco) show the annual jobless rate dipped from 3.1% in 2020 to 3% last year, while unemployment in December 2021 was 25% down on a year earlier. The damage was largely mitigated by state hand-outs including extended unemployment payments, the short-time working hours scheme, plus loans and grants for struggling companies.
The Swiss National Bank said today it expects to post a profit of CHF26 billion ($28 billion) for 2021, a windfall made exclusively from its growing foreign currency holdings. The bank plans to distribute some CHF6 billion to the confederation and cantons under the terms of a profit-sharing agreement. It also expects to issue a CHF15 dividend payment per share after setting aside CHF8.7 billion for its own currency reserves.
Cantons want Bern to take steps to tackle spread of forged Covid certificates.
After various cases of fake Covid certs were discovered over the past few months in Vaud, Geneva, Schaffhausen, and notably St Gallen, attention is turning to how to fix the problem and how widespread it could be, SRF reports todayExternal link. But it’s also leading to more of the tit-for-tat between federal and cantonal authorities that has caused bottlenecks in the pandemic response to date. In this case, while cantons issue certificates (and investigate fraud), the software is centralised by the Federal Office for Public Health (FOPH), leading to regions now calling on Bern to pick up the slack.
SRF says Aargau in particular has written a letter to the FOPH, calling the situation untenable. “The current certificate management system promotes fraud,” the canton writes. “To safeguard the credibility of the certificate in the eyes of the population, immediate action from your side is essential”. The letter, which SRF says is “backed by most other cantons”, is based on worries that too many different people have access to the certificate issuing software, including testing centres. Cantons are also concerned that they don’t have better access to the mechanics of the system, which would allow them find out when and where certificates were issued, and to follow up if needed.
As for the FOPH, it has sprung into action with a dull sounding but hopefully effective “working group made up of federal and cantonal representatives”. Having admitted that the large numbers who can issue the certs makes oversight complicated, the FOPH wants to improve monitoring and set up a system to automatically alert cantons about suspicious cases. As for the amount of forgeries floating around at the moment, this is difficult to gauge: while the cantonal examples mentioned involved a couple of hundred (or thousand, in St Gallen), Aargau writes that fakes are only usually discovered “by chance”, or when a member of the public raises the case.
Poll finds large support for ban on tobacco advertising ahead of February vote.
The first major opinion poll ahead of national votes on February 13 suggest the government isn’t in for an easy ride. Public opinion is currently swinging against the official line on three of the four issues, according to a gfs.bern survey published today. The clearest issue is a proposal to ban tobacco advertisements targeting young people; 73% are in favour. Elsewhere, an initiative to stop experiments on animals is more or less split down the middle, while a government- and parliament-backed plan to cut stamp duty as a boost to big companies is trailing by 7 percentage points. A proposal to give financial aid to Swiss media companies is also split, with 48% in favour and 48% against. More info on what’s at stake in each case: Anti-tobacco advertising, Animal testing ban, Abolition of stamp duty, and State aid for Swiss media.
Keyboard warriors: a third of army recruits to start their service in home office.
Like last year, the annual army training camp for this year’s new recruits has been hit by the pandemic: one-third of the 11,200 new bloods will enter service online when this year’s training starts on January 17, the army said today. How will this work? Bedroom rather than barrack salutes? According to the army, remote military service involves a demanding six hours daily of online learning, with a further four hours per week of physical activity. Then later, at the end of the month, this remaining third can physically join their comrades. And while the army statement did not mention whether they would be tested to see if they did their homework, they definitely will be tested for Covid – before and after arriving on site.
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