BERN. The referendum against the new priority of collective labour agreements over statutory minimum wages has been formally launched, with the committee announcing on Thursday that it collected twice the 50,000 signatures required. The vote will decide whether a generally binding collective agreement may set pay floors below a cantonal minimum wage.
The change, passed by parliament this year, gives collective agreements precedence where they conflict with cantonal minimum wage laws. Supporters call it a defence of the social partnership that has organised Swiss pay for a century. Opponents call it a loophole that lets employers negotiate around wage floors that voters approved directly.
What the vote is about
Five cantons and a growing number of communes have introduced minimum wages over the past decade, from Geneva’s roughly CHF 24 an hour to the CHF 23.90 that currently applies in the city of Zurich. Where a generally binding collective agreement sets a lower floor for a sector, the new federal rule lets the agreement prevail. The referendum asks voters to strike that rule out.
The timing is pointed. The city of Zurich has announced that its minimum wage will rise to CHF 24.59 an hour from January, adjusted for inflation. Each such increase widens the gap between cantonal floors and the lowest collectively agreed rates, and with it the number of workers for whom the question is not theoretical.
The arguments
Employers’ associations argue that collective agreements are the better instrument because they are negotiated branch by branch and take account of regional conditions. A rigid cantonal floor, they say, ignores the differences between a Geneva hotel and a mountain restaurant, and undermines the autonomy of the social partners that the constitution protects.
The committee replies that a minimum wage approved by voters cannot be negotiable at the bargaining table. It points to sectors where collectively agreed minima sit well below cantonal floors, and warns that the new rule invites a quiet erosion of the pay floors introduced over the past decade.
The Federal Chancellery will now verify the signatures, a formality that takes several weeks. If the count is confirmed, the Federal Council will set a date, and the vote is expected next year. Both camps begin with organised constituencies: the unions and the left on one side, the employers and the centre right parties on the other.
For households on the lowest pay, the outcome decides a practical question: whether the number on the cantonal statute book is a floor or merely a starting position. The signature haul suggests the committee will have the money and the volunteers to make that argument loudly.