Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
What do you think about the “locals” in the country where you live? What do they think of you? In today’s briefing, we bring news of a survey that reinforces the love-hate relationship between Switzerland and its immigrants. But first the news of the day.
In the news: Taiwan troubles, UN prestige, and chimp chatter.
- The Chinese embassy in Bern has criticised a vote by the House of Representatives (pictured) earlier this week in which parliamentarians pledged to deepen ties with their counterparts in Taiwan. Such a deviation from the One-China policy amounts to an interference in internal Chinese affairs, the embassy said.
- Switzerland presided over the UN Security Council yesterday for the first time since it took over the rotating role for a month. Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis called on the body to “restore confidence” for a lasting peace. “It’s time for the Security Council to take responsibility and reflect on its potential” in the face of crises, Cassis said.
- Scientists at the University of Zurich (UZH) have found that chimpanzees, like humans, communicate in sentences. The monkeys link individual calls in certain situations to create a new meaning, the researchers said in a paper published today in the journal Nature Communications.
Part-time paradise? Slackers drag down the Swiss job market.
As labour shortages continue to bother Swiss employers, debates are brewing about how much work is enough and how much is not enough (interestingly, in 2023, the question “how much is too much” doesn’t feature). Specifically, the trend towards more part-time work is getting people hot and bothered, including an NZZ columnist who wrote recently of a “Dolce Vita Switzerland”. The employers’ federation also included the proposal to “work more” in an eight-point plan to address labour shortages last month.
It has all the ingredients for a good debate, given that it’s not just about the economy, but also society and morals (how dare they work only three days a week!) But do the arguments against part-timers hold up? Boris Zürcher, Director of the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, told Tamedia newspapers todayExternal link (paywall) that they don’t: “It’s progress!” he said. Thanks to part-time work, overall participation in the Swiss labour market is extremely high by international comparison, and more women are employed than they would be otherwise, he said.
Added to this is the fact that as more and more men reduce their working hours, women are increasing theirs; the trend is slowly converging towards the middle. And as for lazy university graduates, who allegedly want to work 50% and then lounge around the rest of the time, Zürcher says such people are in fact often the least likely to be unemployed. They also work more and longer – even beyond retirement age. As for whether we should be morally obliged to put in more hours, that’s for a conversation at the coffee machine, on the rare days that we do make it into the office to do something.
Foreigners in Switzerland: difficult to please.
A Tages-Anzeigersurvey todayExternal link (paywall) shows that foreigners living in Switzerland like life here, but they have some qualms. That is, they (or rather “we”, since the writer is a foreigner) are fans of the landscape, the cleanliness, and the security, but not the Swiss. Or at least, they find them standoffish (68%), materialistic (59%), pedantic (52%), boring (48%), and racist (60%). The paper also collected various gripes from “expats” (presumably this doesn’t include regular “migrants” or “asylum seekers”) about things like church bells and rubbish collection difficulties. It all adds up to the same conclusion: the Swiss are a funny bunch who are difficult to get to know. As for what the Swiss think of all these “expats”, this wasn’t part of the survey: asking such questions would surely amount to racism and standoffishness!
Professional cycling: a good way to shed the kilos.
Just in time for the start of the Giro d’Italia this week, scientists from Bern and Zurich have come to an interesting conclusionExternal link: top (male) road cyclists are getting skinnier. Between 1992 and 2022, the average body mass index (BMI) of the top five finishers in the three “Grand Tours” (Italy, France, Spain) fell from 22.12 to 20.13. While this is not below “normal” (18.5 is recommended as minimum), it does mean riders are increasingly optimising their bodies, with results that could become damaging if taken too far. They recommend that cycling authorities make sure riders don’t get too skinny, or that they at least know the risks. They don’t recommend the obvious solution, which would be to stop making them climb over massive mountains for eight hours each day in scorching temperatures.
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