Switzerland Today

Dear Swiss Abroad,

The first days of October have seen temperature records tumbling around Switzerland, sometimes records that are decades old.

If you are still working from home, you might be wondering how much this practice, which gained ground during Covid, has developed in Switzerland and elsewhere.

And documents have revealed a secret plot by the Ethiopian government against the head of the Geneva-based World Health Organization.

For these and other stories, read on...

Keystone / Peter Klaunzer

In the news: more members of parliament reveal their incomes, medicines with no effect and direct flights resume between Geneva and Mauritius.

• Federal parliamentarians standing for re-election on October 22 are more transparent about their income than they were four years ago, says Lobbywatch. According to the transparency platform, 56% of them have declared how much they earn, compared with 33% in 2019.

• Air Mauritius has resumed direct flights between Mauritius and Geneva. The popular service was suspended for three years because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many reasons explain the success of this destination: long-standing links with Switzerland, no time difference, a French-speaking country, and not a niche market, according to Stéphane Jayet, vice president of the Swiss Travel Federation.

• Victims of clerical abuse have travelled to Geneva to urge the United Nations to force the Vatican to honour its international obligations. “It’s a pandemic and it has to stop,” Adalberto Mendez, founder of Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA), told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday, In Geneva, members of ECA and victims are due to hold talks on the sidelines of the UN Human Rights Council.

• Nearly 60% of medicines displayed in pharmacy windows in Switzerland have no medically proven efficacy, a study has found. The study, conducted by a team of doctors at Biel Hospital Centre and published on Monday, found that out of 970 medicines examined, only 418 (or 43.1%) had proven efficacy. They are recommending efficacy labelling on non-prescription medicines. 

• By 5pm on October 2, no fewer than 20 MeteoSwiss weather stations had recorded new record temperature highs since measurements began. In Fahy, canton Jura, the temperature reached 27.6°C, beating the previous record of 27.3°C on October 3, 1985. 

Keystone / Peter Schneider

How is teleworking faring after the pandemic?

While some professions adopted 100% working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic, many companies are now limiting the possibility of working from home to two or three days a week. Swiss public broadcaster RTS looked into how teleworking has revolutionised the world of work.

In 2020, during the pandemic, the number of occasional home workers in Switzerland reached 34%, or 1.5 million people, according to the Federal Statistical Office. In 2021, when teleworking became compulsory in many professions, it reached a peak of around 40%, before dropping slightly to 37% last year.

Swisscom employee Christophe Wegmann, for example, works two days a week from his home in canton Vaud, western Switzerland. With two children aged 10 and 13, teleworking allows him to reconcile family and professional life. He has converted his attic into a workspace, equipped with webcams, screens and an office chair. Wegmann estimates that teleworking increases his electricity costs by around 2% to 3%. His employer doesn’t cover these costs, but he uses less petrol working from home, and is satisfied with the experience.

In Sion, at one of Groupe Mutuel’s sites, the 2,700 employees have gone from teleworking five days a week during the pandemic to a maximum of two days today. When they telework, they receive a company computer. The rest of the costs are borne by the employee. However, the company does offer a range of office supplies at reduced prices.

Since the pandemic, the company has transformed its office into a “flex-desk” where no desk is allocated. Its human resources manager Kristel Rouiller told RTS that although teleworking reduces the amount of workspace on site, it is more about optimising the use of space and offering employees more flexibility.

The teleworking revolution can go even further. Some companies are opting for “full remote”, a system where employees work where they want and when they want. This is the solution chosen by Exponent, a Geneva-based web agency.

In 2020, a Harvard University study showed that teleworking was more productive. However, three years later, a revised version of this study indicates that teleworking can reduce efficiency. Claudia Senik, professor of economics at Sorbonne University and the Paris School of Economics, told RTS that people need to be in an environment where other people are working and where there is a constant signal that you are there to work.

© Keystone / Martial Trezzini

Secret Ethiopian plot against World Health Organization leader

Documents seen by Bloomberg have revealed a secret plot apparently pitting the Ethiopian government against the head of the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO), the news agency reports.

They are two of the best-known African leaders on the planet. The 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, and his compatriot Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (photo above), who as head of the World Health Organization became the face of the global response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Yet the two are now on opposite sides of a campaign exposed by previously undisclosed Ethiopian government documents that appear to show how the Abiy administration tried to discredit the global health leader with allegations of embezzlement and sexual misconduct ahead of his reappointment at the WHO in 2022. Tedros, who has denied all the allegations and hasn’t been charged with any crimes, says he is reluctant to return to his native Ethiopia — Africa’s second-most populous nation — without assurances that he and his family will be safe.

The collapse in relations between the two men can be traced back to November 2020 — the month Abiy declared war on the ruling party of the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia. Prior to his appointment at the WHO, Tedros, a Tigrayan, had dedicated his professional life to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the political party that for three decades governed Ethiopia.  

Bloomberg saw the documents before approaching Tedros, who said he was unaware of criminal proceedings against him in Ethiopia. He agreed to talk about the duress he and his family have been under but said he didn’t want to undermine attempts to implement a peace deal reached last November by the government and the TPLF.