Switzerland is one of the top three countries to grow old, according to a global index of wellbeing for people over 60. But a Swiss non-governmental organisation warns that growing numbers of elderly people are affected by poverty.

HelpAge International’s Global AgeWatch Index has ranked Switzerland as the third-best place to grow old after Norway and Sweden.
The index measures income security, health, personal capability and whether the person lives in an “enabling environment”. Indicators include life expectancy, coverage by pension plans, access to public transit and the poverty rate for people over 60.

Switzerland ranked consistently high in all domains, said the report, which was published to coincide with the United Nations International Day of Older Persons on October 1.

It stressed the country’s excellent results for health, the highest rate of satisfaction for public transport in its region and a higher-than-regional average employment rate.

But the alpine nation performed poorly for income security, with a higher-than-average old age poverty rate for its region. The index revealed that 17.6% of people aged 60 and over had an income of less than half the country’s median income.

You need money

On Wednesday, Pro Senectute Switzerland, an NGO representing old people, warned that all was not rosy.

In 2013, 264,000 millionaires were living in Switzerland – 55,720 more than in 2008 – of whom 53% were of retirement age.

But the number of elderly people drawing emergency state benefits was also up to 185,000, an increase of 26,801 since 2008.

“The gap between rich and poor just gets bigger,” the NGO said in a statement. “The common image of rich retirees doesn’t reflect what we see on a daily basis.”

Pro Senectute said 5,000 new benefit requests are made each year in Switzerland for retired people whose income and pensions are not sufficient to allow them to live a decent life,” said Werner Schärer, director of Pro Senectute Switzerland.

“It’s estimated that poverty affects one out of eight elderly people. Over 75% of them live at home and need extra help and services to cover their essential needs. Those people concerned are generally isolated and their poverty remains invisible.”

HelpAge International’s Global AgeWatch Index predicts that by 2050, 21% of the global population will be over 60.

Swiss people have a particularly high life expectancy. Swiss women can expect to live to an impressive 85.1 years and Swiss men to 80.7, pipped by only Japanese women (87) and Icelandic men (81.2).

Source: Swissinfo.ch

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Could Geneva’s chronic traffic problems be eased by a new road tunnel under the lake? On September 28 locals will decide when they vote on plans to build a 1.5-kilometre-long tunnel close to the city’s famous Jet d’Eau fountain.

For years Geneva has been grappling with the thorny issue of whether to build a tunnel or a new bridge – or nothing at all – to help people cross from one side of the lake to the other and help congestion.

The issue is once again back at the ballot box. Citizens from canton Geneva can vote on a rightwing Swiss People’s Party initiative, backed by the populist Geneva Citizens’ Movement and the Touring Club of Switzerland (TCS) motoring association, to construct a tunnel at the far western end of the lake, known locally as “La Rade”.

Supporters argue that Geneva suffers from huge mobility problems and a new road tunnel under the lake is urgently needed, especially as 100,000 new inhabitants are expected to move to the region in the next 15 years.

“The authorities have no solutions to relieve the heavily congested city centre nor to offer an alternative when the Mont Blanc Bridge has to be renovated in the near future,” bemoaned the president of the Geneva branch of the People’s Party, Céline Amaudruz.

Switzerland’s second biggest city is at a busy crossroads with France and the Alps. In addition to its 450,000 local residents, every day some 109,000 people commute to work from across the French border and from neighbouring canton Vaud.

The city centre and its main lake crossing point – the Mont Blanc Bridge – are often snarled up with traffic. Poor cantonal road infrastructure is hurting the local economy, say the Rade tunnel supporters. The TCS estimates 25,000 working hours are lost every day in Geneva owing to traffic jams.

“Outdated and too expensive”

But most other political parties as well as a number of environmental and local community groups reject the initiative, calling it outdated, too expensive and environmentally unfriendly.

Armed with their own impact study and statistics, they say the Rade tunnel will actually make things worse, creating a pull-effect, gridlock and pollution at the tunnel access points close to the centre.

The project may also cause irreversible damage to a local park, lakeside areas and a groundwater source that provides 20% of the canton’s drinking water, they warn.

“It will undoubtedly increase the traffic problems that it claims it will resolve and lengthen traffic jams, which will be detrimental to local residents.

No other city would launch such a project in its city centre,” said Geneva Mayor Sami Kanaan, a member of the centre-left Social Democratic Party.

Each side has been throwing around cost estimates varying between CHF660 million-CHF1.5 billion ($705 million-$1.6billion). Opponents argue this is far too much for the cash-strapped canton to bear alone, and would impact on current ten-year infrastructure investment plans.

To add to voters’ confusion, the centre-right Radical and Christian Democrat parties recently launched their own plans for a future cantonal initiative: a longer 4km tunnel at a wider part of the lake, which would link up to the cantonal ring road and Swiss-French motorway network. This would cost CHF3.5 billion and may be eligible for federal funds. But the project is not likely to be realised before 2030 at the earliest – or 2050, according to critics.

While the People’s Party says the two projects are complementary, opponents say the shorter Rade tunnel would kill Bern’s potential backing for the longer one.

Sharp exchanges

In recent weeks local debate has heated up, with sharp exchanges between the two sides and irate letters from residents to local papers.

“A new lake crossing…yes and quickly! It doesn’t matter if it’s small or big, financed with public or private money, free or if it costs something. Geneva has turned into a mousetrap for anyone wanting to pass from one side of the lake to the other at any time of the day,” wrote local resident Françoise Buffat in the Tribune de Genève newspaper.

But is a tunnel or bridge really the answer to Geneva’s traffic problems? Vincent Kaufmann, an urban mobility specialist at Lausanne’s Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), is not convinced.

“The Rade tunnel won’t resolve anything except create new traffic jams. It will also be very expensive and lead to a reduction in the use of public transport,” he commented.

“The world has changed”

The longer lake tunnel is not the solution either, added Kaufmann: “Over the past 15 years car ownership in canton Geneva has fallen from 500 per 1,000 households to around 420. If the number of people giving up their cars continues to fall, and if we have lower population growth as in the current climate, and the CEVA regional train network is finalised before 2020, I’m not sure we need these kinds of crossings.”

The real problem is the canton’s policy towards cars, and the fact that the debate in Geneva over a new bridge or tunnel has hardly shifted in the past 20 years, said the EPFL professor.

“But the world has changed,” said Kaufmann. “The problem in Geneva is that they’ve tried to improve public transport while maintaining cars across the city. But you can’t do both. At one point you need to make clear choices like Bordeaux, Strasbourg and many cities in Germany have done.”

The new initiative proposes a tunnel with two lanes in each direction under the lake linking Avenue de France on the northern bank with Port Noir, a marina on the south side.

The question of whether to build a bridge or tunnel in Geneva to help people cross from one side of the lake to the other and ease congestion has been debated for years.

In 1896 painter and architect Albert Trachsel presented a project for a tunnel at the Rade in Geneva to preserve the lakeside view. In 1943 architect Emile-Albert Favre published a study on the need for a raised bridge. Then in 1945 he revised his plans in favour of demolishing the Mont Blanc Bridge and replacing it with two tunnels.

In June 1988 68% of local voters agreed in principle to a new lake crossing. However, in June 1996 two-thirds of voters rejected plans to build either a tunnel or a bridge across the lake.

 

By Simon Bradley

Source: Swissinfo.ch

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Just over 14% of men work part-time in Switzerland, a country with the second highest rate of part-time workers out of all OECD nations. Nine out of ten men would like to reduce their hours at work, according to one study. So why don’t more make this a reality?

 

“Lots of men feel responsible for their family’s financial security, they’re worried about their career being affected by their decision and they’re anxious about appearing unmotivated at work,” Jürg Wiler, co-leader of the ‘Teilzeitmann’ (Men Working Part-Time) campaign told swissinfo.ch

Wiler is an advocate for men who want to achieve a bit more work-life balance and says that during the lunchtime events he organises to promote this way of working, he regularly talks to men who “fear stigma in their business and social environment” and who have questions about a “loss of status”.

The campaign, which is a project by männer.ch, the Swiss association of men’s and father’s groups, carried out a study in canton St Gallen in 2011. They spoke to 1,200 men from all walks of life and found that 90% of them wanted to work part-time.

In 2012 they started making role models available – ordinary men who just happened to work part-time, and were happy to speak about their experience to others.

Thomas Stucki is one of them. He’s been in part-time employment since he retrained and studied for a second degree, in social sciences, at the age of 30.

“When I started my university studies, I had to work part-time to earn the money I needed. And from that time on, after the degree and after having studied, I never got back to a full-time job because I saw that this was a good thing for me.”

By the time Stucki neared the end of his course, his wife was expecting their first child. “We didn’t even question that I would work part-time. I wanted it this way and she did too. So, as a couple, we decided to try it.”

For couples such as Stucki and his wife, who works as a child and youth psychologist, sharing the childcare and the responsibility for earning a living was a natural choice.

The father-of-two told swissinfo.ch that he considers himself lucky, as he receives a generally positive response when he tells other people about the family set-up: “I generally meet and know people who share the same values. I’m not so much in contact with classical business people, who might say, ‘oh you’re working part-time, how do you that’, and so on”.

Fears of repercussions in the workplace mean that more men would like to work part-time than the number that do, according to Irenka Krone, a specialist in part-time work at the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).

“There are many employers, that when men are asking for that [to work part-time] they have the reaction that this person is not really interested in what they are doing…so there is a misperception.”

But Wiler believes that attitudes are changing towards part-time positions for men.

“It seems to be more accepted when men say they want to put in a full performance, but they don’t want to have a workload of 120% or even 140% anymore,” he told swissinfo.ch. “This is something from the generation before, from our fathers.”

By the fourth quarter of 2013, an additional 23,000 men had started working part-time – a 0.9 percentage point increase on the fourth quarter of 2012.

“That’s very important for us…it was a big jump,” Wiler said.

Over the whole year, 2013 saw a slightly smaller increase on the year before.

Looking at the more long-term figures, it’s clear that part-time employment among men has become more common over the past two decades.

The association’s aim is for 20% of working men to be in part-time employment by 2020.

In comparison, 58.6% of employed women go to work part-time. Since the early 1990s more than half of all women in the workplace have been part-time employees.

Making the business and economics case

Wiler can quote a whole host of studies that show the benefit to business when men work part-time.

He cites German research pointing to a 17% higher productivity among part-time employees and adds that having fewer hours in your contract can lead to lower absence rates, higher efficiency and more motivated staff.

“They [the men] need the acceptance from their employers and from their partners. And for employers it’s important to know that there is a return on investment,” said Wiler.

Krone and her team analysed the situation in Switzerland to come up with possible solutions to common difficulties with part-time work. “We believe that the model of job sharing allows men to continue to make a career while at the same time working on a part-time schedule.”

Referencing Deutsche Bank as a high profile company which has co-chief executive officers, Krone argues that a job share can happen at any level within the hierarchy of a business.

“If you have a position announced on a full time basis and then the role is split between two people, the problem can be a question of salary…if someone has to reduce their salary by 50 or 60%.”

She suggests that while one person works 70% of their contracted hours on certain high level tasks, but shares the very top position with another person, this would allow another employee to work part-time.

Stucki is also well aware that with reduced hours comes a reduced income, and a lower pension.

“It cannot work for everyone from a financial point of view. Even for me and my wife – we have university degrees, we have a good education and had good opportunities – and it’s not easy, “ Stucki said. “I can imagine if you are not in such a good position, it’s not possible.”

“There is a change happening in the mindset of younger fathers…there is a change in progress,” said Wiler, convinced that despite all of these points, attitudes towards part-time work are becoming different among employers and in society.

 

By Jo Fahy

Source: Swissinfo.ch

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