Geneva: Swiss voters on Sunday rejected a proposed hourly minimum wage of $25 which would have been the world’s highest in one of the planet’s priciest nations, a polling agency said.Only 23 per cent of Swiss voters came out in favour of introducing a minimum wage in Switzerland so high it could pass for mid-management pay elsewhere, the gfs.bern polling institute said in a projection of Sunday’s referendum results.
Voters also appeared likely to nix a multi billion dollar deal, a decade in the making, to buy fighter jets from Sweden, while they overwhelmingly supported measures to ban paedophiles from working with children.Much of the national debate ahead of the referendums, which are held every three months in Switzerland as part of the country’s direct democratic system, has focused on the pros and cons of introducing a minimum wage.
The “Decent Salary” initiative insists that at least 22 Swiss francs ($25) an hour, or 4,000 francs ($4,515) a month, is needed to get by in the wealthy Alpine nation. Backers of the initiative want Switzerland to go from having no minimum wage to boasting the world’s highest, far above the $7.25 in the United States.
