The Hotel Weiss Kreuz in Thusis GR is a small hotel that has been around for 175 years. Hotel manager Thomas Rüegg calls it a “stage hotel”. “We are not a premium destination. We are surrounded by good destinations. People visit us on the way there – on the way through.” Rüegg employs 24 people, half of them part-time, all women.
Additional costs for small businesses
They would be particularly affected by the BVG reform, because the reform would increase their contributions to the second pillar, or they would have to pay into the second pillar altogether. They would later receive a higher pension fund pension in return. Since the employer co-finances at least half of the contributions, the costs for companies would also rise.
Rüegg does not yet know exactly how much the reform would cost him, but he expects it to be a few percent more. He currently pays between 60,000 and 70,000 francs a year for his employees’ occupational pensions. “We cannot pay indefinitely, but what is currently on the table is affordable,” says Rüegg. He supports the reform because the better social benefits make the hotel industry, with its “not exactly the most attractive working conditions and low wages,” a little more attractive in at least one area.
Will the croissants become more expensive?
Master baker Roland Räber sees things quite differently. He has been running the Räber bakery in Jona SG for over 20 years and has 30 employees. Räber has calculated: “The reform will cost me between 15,000 and 30,000 francs a year, depending on whether I also co-finance the employees’ loss of wages.” That would be up to a quarter of an annual profit. And if wage costs increase, the customer always pays for it.
“No entrepreneur can finance this just like that.” For Räber, it is therefore clear that he would have to add between 10 and 40 cents to the price of baked goods. “With every price increase, you lose customers. And we cannot allow bread from the bakery to become more and more of a luxury item.” He fears that this will only exacerbate the decline of bakeries.
Roland Räber is not fundamentally against improving the situation of low-income earners and part-time workers, but for him the reform comes at the wrong time: “We have had various price increases due to energy and raw material prices. Then there is also the 13th AHV pension, which we also do not yet know how it will be financed.”
“Decent working conditions have a price tag”
Thomas Rüegg will probably also have to increase overnight prices. He has a certain understanding of the situation facing bakeries: “Price sensitivity for products like bread is of course different than for a hotel stay. Nevertheless, it is also a social question whether we want to create decent working conditions. At the end of the day, that has a price tag.”
Rüegg, who is also on the board of the Hotelleriesuisse Graubünden interest group, represents a similar position to that of the employers’ association and other business associations such as Economiesuisse or the trade association. Small business owners in the “Rappen business”, as baker Räber calls it, would fight the reform – as well as bakers, restaurateurs, butchers and hairdressers.
