We have been here for abour a year now, and my wife's cousin is very interested in moving here too. Her husband works in the construction industry, more specifically driving cranes (or diggers - I'm not sure what they're called - not the tower cranes though). He is very experienced (about 12-15 years I guess) and runs his own company at the moment.

I've been asked to look around to see what his possibilities would be, so my question is this - do you think it's possible for him to work here not knowing any German? (I think the job would be somewhere along 'Kranfuhrer' - but I work in tax so I might be totally off here). He just started German lessons now so it might take a couple of months for him to learn.

Second question - are they salary levels decent in this industry? (i.e. taking an average salary of Chf5.5k a month, are they average, below or higher?

Cheers

Pretty much impossible, but one only needs very basic german. He doesn't have to be able to hold an intelectual conversation, but need to know up and down , right and left etc. They call the mashines here a "bagger"...

I don't know anything about pay levels. But I guess what your wife's cousin does is drive JCBs? Those machines with wheels or crawlers (is that the right word in English?) he drives? That would be a Bagger as lifefire pointed out and the job discription is Baggerfahrer.

I think he would need to know a smidgen of German (or Portugues or Italian or some eastern European language to be honest). I have worked with plenty of people in that position that only know little German.

Whether there is a demand for Baggerfahrer I don't know, sorry.

Yes that's right.. they usually have either a pointed end to dig or a bucket to shovel if I'm not mistaken..

He does know some Italian but as you say I think his best bet would be some, at least basic, German.

I'll try and see what the demand seems to be.. though I'm suspecting the current and future pressures on porperty will not be doing too much good to the construction industry..