French Alps, seen from Celigny, Vaud in Switzerland
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Frontaliers (cross-border workers) are said by some to be at the root of many of Geneva’s social problems, from traffic to crime to unemployment. These concerns among Geneva’s voters were reflected in last weekend’s elections to the cantonal parliament, or Grand Conseil, which gave the right-wing Mouvement des Cityoyens Genevois (MCG) an increase of 8 seats to 17, out of 100.
Le Temps asks in a lengthy article 16 October if there is any truth to the concerns that MCG raises, namely that frontaliers cause the problems of which they are accused.
The number of cross-border workers has increased in recent years, more than 10 percent in the past three years. Le Temps points out that communes with border crossings voted strongly in favour of the MCG, in response to the increased traffic congestion. Cross-border workers do not seem to be the cause of more crime, reports Le Temps, but adds that the police do not keep statistics on this.
So what of the question of frontaliers taking jobs away from Genevans? There is little evidence that they do, according to Le Temps, which cites the University of Geneva’s Observatoire de l’emploi, an applied economics unit that has had a mandate from the canton to study the problem. Border-crossers work in jobs where Genevans no longer want to: in restaurants, hotels, or as salespeople in shops. Or else they find employment in jobs where there are not enough qualified Genevans to do the work: finance, banking, or information technology. There are 45,000 more such jobs than there are qualified people in Geneva.There is also little hard evidence that cross-border workers keep wages and salaries down. Geneva’s salaries have increased more than Zurich’s in the past six years, reports Le Temps, and 45 percent of jobs in Geneva are covered by collective bargaining agreements that support wages across an entire industry and protects them from competition.
And the canton says that it can do with the CHF610 million in taxes that the frontaliers contribute.
Links to other sites: Le Temps, Observatoire universitaire de l’emploi, Geneva (Fre)
This work by genevalunch.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.
News story, GenevaLunch, 16 October 2009.
Filed under: Society
Tags: Business, cantonal parliament, crime, cross-border workers, Education, frontaliers, Grand Conseil, MCG, Mouvement des Citoyens Genevois, Observatoire de l'emploi, traffic, traffic congestion, unemployment, University of Geneva
May 29th, 2011 at 11:01 am
[...] is the classic anti-foreigner one of protecting jobs for people at home, in this case the Swiss. Le Temps, in a lengthy article in 2009 that asked if there is any truth to anti-border worker claims by Geneva’s local MCG party, [...]