A few weeks before the election, the influential popular Zurich daily Blick already called him a man “the most powerful in the country”sensing an authentic political earthquake in a country where the seismograph is usually flat, since the majority (on the right) has never changed since 1848 and the founding of the modern State.
Sunday March 3, Councilor to the States (Senator) Pierre-Yves Maillard (Swiss Socialist Party, PSS), also president of the Swiss Trade Union Union (USS), indeed won one of the bitterest political battles fought in the Alpine country in recent years. With 58.2% of votes in favor at the national level and a majority of cantons in favor of the proposal, Swiss citizens accepted the popular initiative “Living retirement better”, launched by the unions and supported by the PSS and the Greens, yet very largely in the minority on the Swiss political scene.
The text aims to strengthen social security, through the payment of a thirteenth monthly retirement allowance (locally called 13e pension), which represents an annual increase of 8.33%. The federal coalition government recommended rejecting the initiative, as did the employers, who threw all their strength into the battle in recent weeks, brandishing the argument of a ” bankruptcy “ predictable from the national pension fund, the AVS (Old Age Insurance), a true Swiss institution since its foundation at the end of the Second World War.
“Change course”
Modestly, Pierre-Yves Maillard refused to talk about a personal victory, despite the personalization he received during the campaign. “In Switzerland, the strongest are always the people. The result of the vote proves that the social pact still works”declared the Vaudois senator. According to him “ “the federal authorities having given no response to the purchasing power crisis, the population seized the opportunity given to them to change course.”
Even if Switzerland manages, against all odds, to always do a little better than its European neighbors during crises (it did not, for example, experience a recession in 2020 during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic). Covid-19), a succession of price increases over the past three years has ended up draining the middle class, here as elsewhere.
The cost of housing and health insurance premiums have notably seen very sharp increases, even though these two sectors are not fully included in the calculation of the inflation rate in Switzerland. Also, the latter (2.1% in 2023) is particularly misleading given the deterioration in the real household budget. This is undoubtedly what made possible this astonishing victory of the left in a country that has been on the right since time immemorial.
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