It’s difficult in Switzerland to know what anyone earns, which makes it hard for many people to work out what their salaries should be, compared to the market. Some helpful official online tools: canton Vaud has a salary calculator, in French, as does Geneva, and the Union Syndicale Suisse has one, in French, German and Italian, for all of Switzerland. They’re imperfect and no calculator lists every job, but they’ll give you a relatively good idea of what value is put on various jobs, experience.
The Swiss federal Solarium web pages give salary data for regions, by gender, foreigners compared to the Swiss, and more – keep in mind that “foreigners” covers a wide range of workers, with many of them in the hotel and restaurant industry, one of the lowest paid business sectors in Switzerland.
TSR recently published a chart with salary indications.
London investment firms are doubling the salaries they are offering in many cases in order to hire back people they lost to the investment boutique business, when some 49,000 jobs were lost, reports Bloomberg. The higher salaries are designed to offset the fall in bonuses, which have come under attack in recent months.
Links to other sites: Bloomberg, Financial Times, London Evening Standard
To Facebook or not? That is the question in Payerne
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Job-seekers in Switzerland, in particular the international population of workers, often have few clues about what standard salaries are, since companies are not allowed to advertise specific job salaries, for privacy reasons. TSR/RSR have provided a useful service by posting a table of average salaries by industry. The low end of the scale is the hotel business, with an average of CHF4,000 per month and at the top is banking and finance, with an average monthly income of CHF8,500.
The table is based on Swiss federal statistics for 2008. It also shows percentage increases in salaries for 2010 that have been announced by six of the largest employers, the industries that pay the least and the change in salaries overall for the past 30 years.
Links to other sites: Travailler en Suisse (Fre), with general Swiss salary information, ch.ch on general work information
US bank Goldman Sachs is fighting a backlash against its plans to share profits with staff by opening a fund that will use the equivalent of about 2.3 percent of staff remuneration, or $500 million to help 10,000 small businesses. The bank Tuesday 17 November apologized publicly for the role it played in the global economic crisis. Goldman has recovered, with analysts saying they expect it to pay close to $22 billion in compensation to staff in 2009. Warren Buffett, a Goldman investor who will oversee the small business programme, told the FT it is not designed to compensate for the bank’s errors.
Links to other sites: Bloomberg, Financial Times, Yahoo Finance
Foreigners at top end out-earn Swiss
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Top managers’ salaries in Switzerland have continued to rise “sharply”, especially in the financial field, since 2006, and the spread between Switzerland’s lowest paid workers and highest increased, a preliminary government statistical report shows. Well-qualified foreign workers and those with long-term C residence permits out-earn their Swiss counterparts while foreigners with lower qualifications and some border workers earn less than Swiss people in comparable jobs.
Salaries, bonuses for insurers, bankers up sharply 2006-2008
The Swiss Statistical Office Tuesday 17 November issued its preliminary report on salaries in 2008. Salaries remained mostly stable, it shows, with the financial sector an exception: salaries and bonuses both rose, with top managers’ salaries increasing 38.8 percent from 2006-2008, compared to an 11.6 percent increase for top managers in all other fields.
Peter Brabeck, chairman, Nestle
Vevey, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Peter Brabeck, chairman of Vevey-based multinational, says the company could reconsider Switzerland as its home base if the government responds to pressure to cap executive salaries.
Geneva, a city that gives you more money after taxes, and lets you spend it quickly
Geneva and Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva and Zurich among the top five priciest cities in the world, along with Oslo, Copenhagen and Toky, according to a study by bank UBS comparing prices and earning in 73 cities around the world. Salaries are highest in Switzerland, Denmark and the US, with workers in Geneva and Zurich having the highest net incomes in the world. The average employee in Delhi, Manila, Jakarta and Mumbai earns less than one-fifteenth of Swiss hourly wages after taxes.
Prices for food in Switzerland are about 45 percent more for food on average than in the rest of Western Europe but to balance it out “no other city allows workers to take home more income at the end of the month than Zurich and Geneva.”
UBS notes that the comparisons are greatly affected by currency fluctuations. London fell 20 places in the cost categories thanks to the pound’s “precipitous devaluation” in the first half of 2009.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The four main Swiss unions, which every summer decide on their salary negotiation policies for the coming year, announced Monday 3 August that they will ask for salary increases in several services and industries. Export business are likely to be the main exception, where the focus will be on keeping jobs, says Travail.Suisse, which represents several federations.
The increases are needed, says the organization, to close the gap between the 13.8 percent increase in GDP (gross domestic product) from 2004 t0 2008 and the only slight increase of 0.5 percent in salaries during the same period. Salaries increases would also improve consumer purchasing power, the unions argue, and would thus help the Swiss economy to reboot.
The Times in the UK has been looking closely at BBC broadcast company’s pay packages and amounts paid for working wth stars, in the latest public close examination of how public money is spent. UK media took several Members of Parliament (MPs) to task recently over exaggerated expense claims. The BBC is largely funded through license fees set by the government. According to the London-based newspaper the BBC has released new information about expenses, under pressure from outside journalists making inquiries under the Freedom of Information Act, but it has not yet published figures showing how much it pays its stars. BBC figures reportedly show that 47 of its top managers are paid more than £200,000 a year. In January 2009 the company froze salaries and bonuses until 2010. BBC Executive Board expenses
Scissors award 2008 for biggest salary spread: ABB
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The salary spread between the lowest-paid worker and a member of the board in Swiss companies has increased 72 percent since 2002. While ordinary workers’ salaries have increased 8.4 percent during this seven-year period, the average board member’s pay has gone up 83 percent.
The figures were relased by Travail.Suisse Monday 15 July. They are the result of the fifth survey it has carried out of 27 Swiss corporate groups’ pay packages.
Travail.Suisse is an independent association that represents the interests of workers. It gave its annual award for the greatest spread in salaries to ABB at a press conference in Bern 15 June and called on the government to heed public cries to stop what it calls “indecent” salaries for top managers and board members.
Geneva, Switzerland (Tribune de Genève, Fre) – the city of Geneva’s notoriously complicated salary and benefits packages is about to be streamlined, with standard pay rates and fewer exceptions, according to the Tribune, which obtained a copy of a political agreement reached after months of wrangling.
Sony will keep wages unchanged for this year and cut bonuses from six to four months. The global financial crisis has hit the Japanese technology sector, causing Sony to freeze workers’ salaries in order to recover, reports Reuters. Sony, unlike some of its competitors, does not raise wages automatically based on seniority. Instead, wages increase annually based on role and performance, and rivals may follow suit as the crisis worsens. Reuters
Updated 19:00 US President Barack Obama’s government announced Wednesday morning in Washington that any bank receiving government assistance will have a pay cap of $500,000 imposed on its executives. BBC, New York Times
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – UBS shares briefly slipped to an all-time low of CHF13.88 Monday after it announced its new compensation package, with no bonuses for bank officials in 2008 and stricter rules for the future.
Lausanne, Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – One-third of schools in canton Vaud were affected Tuesday as civil servants took to the streets again to protest the new salary grid. The crowd, estimated by TSR at 8-10,000 people, is one of the largest in the series of protests that began in January 2008.
Title: Personnel compensation in Switzerland – 2009 outlook
Location: Geneva, Ramada Park Hotel
Link out: Click here
Description: Panelists: Giorgio Cortiana,
head corporate research Europe, UBS Wealth Management Research, Martin Naville
chief executive officer, Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce
Start Time: 11:45
Date: 03 Nov 2008
End Time: 14:00
Euro 2008 tears for police
Geneva, Switzerland (Tribune de Geneve, Fre) – Police in Geneva, like their colleagues in Lausanne, have agreed to stop handing out fines for minor infractions in protest against the city’s decision not to pay them an expected CHF2,500 bonus for their Euro 2008 work.
Lausanne, Switzerland (24 Heures, Fre) – Police and cantonal authorities met Wednesday and failed to reach agreement on pollice salaries as well as payment for the overtime officers put in during the Euro 2008 games. As a result, the refusal by police to issue minor traffic tickets, whose fines are an important source of cantonal revenue, continues.
Bern, Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – Real salaries inched up in 2006 by 0.1%. While the increase shows near-stagnation in purchasing power for the Swiss, it is a turnaround: the first increase in the rate of growth since 2001. The rate of growth of real salaries in 2005 was slightly negative, -0.2%. The figures are part of the annual salary statistics released by the Federal Statistical Office (OFS) in Bern Monday.
The nominal salary index shows a 2.1% increase, but with the cost of living up 1.1% real salaries rose only slightly. The real salary figure is a key to consumer spending power, but the annual figures published by the OFS ultimately serve as the basis for salary negotiations for collective contracts in Switzerland every autumn.
