Pierre-Yves Maillard does not want to accept the agreement with the EU.Image: keystone
For the advisor to the socialist States, the new agreement undermines the “salary protection” of the Swiss. He protests.
27.12.2024, 09:3027.12.2024, 10:35
For Vaudois Pierre-Yves Maillard, the new agreement with the EU is unacceptable. “The Federal Council has sacrificed our salary protection! We cannot still submit to the people a package that compromises on this point,” he declared in an interview with Blick.
It is above all the European regulations on reimbursement which bothers the trade unionist. Posted workers would be paid by their country of origin. In most cases, the scales are lower than in Switzerland. “Posted workers would become cheaper than our own workers, because we would have to pay them fewer fees,” he explains. “It would also increase pressure on national wages and become a problem for local industry.”
“The Federal Council lost an opportunity to speak clearly to the EU”
Pierre-Yves Maillard
The Socialist State Councilor fears wage cuts for workers: “Hundreds of thousands of them risk seeing their situation deteriorate in our country. The Federal Council has lost an opportunity to speak clearly to the EU.”
Switzerland-EU: when Maillard recounted the tensions within the PS????
Behind closed doors, many say that the new European agreement has no chance anyway, says Maillard Blick. In addition to the SVP, the union is also currently opposing it. “If the independent protection of income and that of the public service are not guaranteed, we will say no.”
Two camps within the PS
Pierre-Yves Maillard, however, refuses to associate with Christoph Blocher, the patriarch of the UDC. “Mr Blocher was in favor of increasing the retirement age to 67 and over, he is not in favor of protecting wages. We don’t agree at all.” They will not run the same campaign.
Within the Socialist Party, two camps could now form. The one who supports the European agreement and the one who sides with the unions. “In all parties, positions sometimes diverge on such complex subjects, that’s how politics works,” explains Maillard. “It is possible that in the end, some will consider the package sufficient, others not.”
(French adaptation: Valentine Zenker)
The news in Switzerland is here
A snow slide occurred this Tuesday in an off-piste area of the Crosets resort, in Valais. The rescuers stopped their search.
An avalanche was triggered on Tuesday around 12:20 p.m. in an off-piste area of the Crosets resort, in the commune of Val-d’Illiez (VS). Emergency services stopped their search at 4:30 p.m. No one was found.
