Hallo, I have got some questions. About 5 minutes later, I read a article about your minimum wage. I am very amazed. In the article was written about increase minimum wage. We have minimum wage 8 000 czech crowns and you will have 82 000 czech crowns. How are the prices in Switzerland? What do you think abou it? How many people go work to Switzerland from other countries? How is the network administrator' s salary? Thank you for answers and sorry for my english.

No minimum wage, however salaries & cost of living are very high.
You might want to use the search function, your type of question has been asked before.

There is no minimum wage, here it is a free market!

http://www.lohnrechner.bfs.admin.ch/...iumWizard.aspx

My sister in law is paid 16.50 to clean for a large supermarket chain, via an Agency. Shameful imho. She is foreign, non EU. My Swiss neighbour also is a cleaner, and she will not accept any work for less than CHF25 (our here in the sticks, not in Geneva or Zurich).

Neuchatel people are voting on the minimum wage principle tomorrow. I will vote yes, despite being aware that it may possibly have negative effects (it's been advanced that a/ it will push wages down b/ it will push all wages up. Sometimes a principle is right and above other considerations. Like the abolition of the slave trade was.

Would you clean the toilets for 16.50! I certainly would NOT and don't expect anybody else to either.

Is this 25,- gross?
Many engineers work 10hrs a day for 90k a year. That's about 42,- per hour. They're all equal, but still an engineer invested about 6-7 more of his best years.

If I needed the work I certainly would, and have done in the past. Not here, but it was for 'minimum wage' which didn't come close to 16.50/hour even considering the difference in cost of living etc.

Around here a full time teacher with masters degree and 10 years experience can expect around 7000/month. That's 40/hour counting a 40 hour week. A construction worker with full apprentisage and ~5 years of experience makes roughly 4700/month on average. That's 27/hour.

-Teacher: years of uni, then more uni, then time spent gaining experience. Responsible for the well being of many young people. Many extra uncounted hours spent on work instead of self.

-Construction worker: years of apprentisage, years of experience, responsible for quality of construction that can impact many lives, as well as working in a dangerous environment.

- Toilet cleaner. Mopes around mopping and scrubbing and swabbing. No education or experience required. No responsibility. This isn't a dig at toilet scrubbers, as I said, I was one. And moved on through education and hard won experience to a better financial life.

40 vs 27 vs 16.50. Seems reasonable to me. Or do we pay everyone more, so it remains 'fair'? That won't work. And if employers are suddenly required by law to pay their lowest rung workers more they will simply fire some of them and expect the remaining ones to pull up the slack to justify their newfound wealth. They might pass a law making employers pay more but Switzerland is still one of the easiest places to be if you want to fire someone.

I don't work 10hrs/day (8.4), and it's been a long time since I earned 90k/yr.

Tom

I know quite a few on the contrary earning like this. And I count every rare day I can clock out 8hr shift and leave work in the office and take kids for a walk. Not that I complain, that's simply how it is.

The minimum wage thread has been running for a few weeks now. Unfortunately the biggest of the threads was for some reason taken down - I asked the mods why, but no response has been given. The negatives of a minimum wage were already highlighted extensively by a few posters yet neither of the points you put up are the ones that were discussed in detail - some people just chose to ignore things they dont understand.

The minimum wage prices out people from employment who earn under what the minimum wage would be. To put it to you simply, if your disabled and are happy to accept 15 francs per hour, which benefits both the employer and yourself, the minimum wage could put you out of work because the employer would rather pay the minimum wage to a fit and able bodied person than to someone who isnt. Thats logical!!

Another example: If for example a business's budget for employees cannot pay more than 120/mth (4 employees earning 30 each) and a minimum wage comes in at 40. This means that one worker will lose their job, because now the business can only keep 3 workers at 40/mth (together also 120/mth which was the previous budget). The 4th worker will now be unemployed and may have go to on welfare to supplement their savings. To add insult to injury, those 3 workers now have to work an extra persons work as well (someone has to pick up the slack from the worker who was let go). This is what the minimum wage does - it unemploys people and discourages employers from taking on extra staff until absolutely necessary. Now this law does not have much impact on large corporations because they probably already hire the best workers at higher than average wages. However, it kills small and medium businesses who are often the lifeblood of an economy, and are often those who receive the least 'breaks' from governments (governments often only care about the large corporations when they dish out perks, like to Norvartis for example). The minimum wage, although can affect many industries, is mostly against smaller businesses - hence why rarely you will see published works in the media against minimum wage.

The minimum wage also stops older citizens being employed because lets face it, who wants to hire an oldie for the same price of getting someone younger (both unskilled). Thats also logical. Hence all people who would normally want to work, BUT have to be priced below what others with the same skillset can get (i.e. because they dont speak the language well, because they have a disability or because they are too old or too young) can no longer price themselves at a level where they would get a job.

Think of it this way. Switzerland has NO MINIMUM wage yet pays one of the highest wages and the lowest unemployment rates in the world - think why? Bring in a minimum wage and it will be one of the variables that begins to change that - together will all the other bureaucratic red tape politicians come up with. Why change something which is as drastic as the minimum wage, when here it works well without one!

What an incredible attitude to have. What if you have lost partial movement in both your arms and it takes 3 times as long to do the job as a 'normal' person? Is it then not a reasonable pay to accept rather than nobody hiring you at all? A job that pays is a good thing - leaching off welfare because it is 'easy and because im entitled' isnt. If it pays too low you can always gain extra qualifications to move into something else - you can never expect much from cleaning toilets, it pays low not because it is a dirty job. It pays low because pretty much every person in the world could do it if needed - the wage is a function of supply and demand.

Eeer, sorry, could you please explain that. I don't quite get your logic.

Engineers who clock?

Tom

Handicapped people are a special case and will often have their wages supplemented by the Social System/invalidity insurance. Why should old people, or foreigners, accept lower wages and bring down prices for people who have families to feed? My sil is limited in choice because she is non EU, black and with poor command of French. She is neither old nor handicapped.

Now I am old, and I have been handicapped in the past - and find it so condescending that being either means you should work for tiddlywinks. Why should a bored old man take a lower salary and get the job instead of someone who has to feed and educate his kids. So my very fit, strong and healthy sil is very fast at doing her work for 16.50- how much should a slower handicapped or old person who takes 3 X the time be paid? Less than 6CHF?

Yes, I agree. I would very much like to know why the other thread was taken down, thanks.

Old slow dude wants to get off sofa and out of the house and into a cleaning job. He wants to be employed officially and understands that it takes him twice as long to get the job done as someone else (he has no other skills). He isnt worth what cleaners normally get per hour, obviously - they are younger and stronger and the employer would therefore have to pay him twice their amount for the same work. He is happy to take half the pay (or less) they get if it gets him the job.

Lex, I think your explanation and examples about the pervert effects of the minimum wage are so clear, remind me of Hazlitt's Economy in one lesson. In economics there is always more that what meets the eye, and the debate on minimum wage is only one of many ideas that have so many unforeseen implications...

I'd like to know which Thread you mean. Anyone know who started it, what it was called and what do you mean by 'taken down'?

A figure of speech. On the same theme as a creative person working in machine-like 8.4hr daily intervals :-)

Is that 16.50 per day or per hour and what does that equal in US dollars?

Per hour, and that's about 17.50USD.

Oh okay thanks!

So the initiative won by a slim margin in Neuenburg. Will you have now to pay the legal minimum wage (tbd) to a teenager helping one with children or picking trash from one's garden? Engineer's half salary?
How about even more ideas to vote on instead: one's child inherits a nice appartment in a nice neighbourhood and rents it to another one's child who doesn't inherit anything like that. One is set for life to support the other. But wait, there is more to that. If both of them work equally hard, the landlord is more likely to get even more properties than the other one, and will use any influence to lower the taxes and bring better payers to the city/canton. How do you tackle that?