Employees do have a thirteenth month, so why shouldn’t retirees have a 13th pension? Switzerland took the plunge this Sunday. With 58% yes according to the first results, the Swiss agree to give retirees a helping hand. Like everyone else, their purchasing power fell with inflation, except that they were starting from even lower. 14% of Swiss retirees live below the poverty line.
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With our correspondent in Geneva,Jeremy Lanche
The surprise is not so much that the Swiss agree to pay a thirteenth pension to retirees. The surprise is that so many of them voted yes – 58% according to estimates – and that all of Switzerland did so.
It was expected that the initiative would fail due to the reluctance of the Swiss-German cantons, generally more conservative. But even on the Zurich side, we believe that we cannot live on the public pension granted by the State alone, as a significant number of retirees do, either because they started working before the professional pension does not become compulsory. Either because they did not work, or not full time.
From now on, each retiree will get between 1,200 and 2,500 Swiss francs more per year. The same thing in euros. For married couples, the calculation is a little more complicated.
This is not what will get them out of precariousness. But it is a welcome first step for the most vulnerable, say the unions. And also a complete paradigm shift when we know that the Swiss refused, at the polls, in 2016, to give a boost to retirement pensions.
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