Travail.Suisse draws a mixed assessment of the salary negotiations for 2025. The salary increases in certain branches are “insufficient” to compensate for the drop in purchasing power, according to the union umbrella.
Despite the economic recovery that Switzerland is experiencing, real wages overall remain “significantly lower” than the 2021 level, regretted Thomas Bauer, head of economic policy at Travail.Suisse, at a press conference on Monday in Bern. While negotiations have led to wage increases in certain sectors, these increases are often not enough to compensate for inflation.
Employees in the healthcare, retail and catering and hospitality sectors are particularly badly off, Thomas Bauer stressed. A “significant” salary gap has accumulated since 2021 in these branches where the unionization rate is lower.
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Construction and crafts have a smile
However, the skies are more lenient for trades in the construction and finishing work sectors. For site workers, carpenters and even painters, salary negotiations led to “satisfactory, even good” results.
In construction, the Syna union indicates, for example, that it has obtained an effective wage increase of 1.4%, a result described as “pleasant”. Among other good news, Syna is pleased to have been able to add the automatic indexation of salaries to inflation in the collective labor agreement (CCT) for secondary work in French-speaking Switzerland.
Syna also notes encouraging developments for craft professions. In this sector, negotiations have sometimes even resulted in “slight” increases in real wages. The president of the union, Yvonne Feri, however noted that these improvements concern a minority of branches, recalling the very complicated situation in hospitals, supermarkets and steelworks.
Public service and budgetary austerity
For public service employees, the picture is more mixed. The outcome of the negotiations is not yet known in many sectors of the public service, but the Transfair union is counting on an “insufficient” result for federal administration employees against a backdrop of austerity measures.
In the public transport sector, transfair reports that inflation compensation has been achieved in negotiations with SBB and other transport companies. Its president, national councilor Greta Gysin (Vert-es/TI), however, reports “tough negotiations” which very often do not lead to an increase in real wages. With La Poste, discussions are still ongoing.
Despite the economic recovery, many workers in Switzerland are seeing their purchasing power decline, summarized Thomas Bauer. “This is an unacceptable development that requires countermeasures,” he said.
ats/ami
