GENEVA–Currently Switzerland has no minimum wage. But on today’s ballot, next to measures attempting to procure fighter jets and implement mandatory penalties for convicted pedophiles, is one to implement what would be the highest minimum wage in the world (paywall)—4,000 Swiss francs ($4,485) a month, which works out to 25 francs ($28) an hour.
Update May 18, 4:24pm CEST: The minimum wage measure failed to pass today. More than 75% of Swiss voters cast ballots against the measure.
Around town, arguments for and against the wage measure can be seen conveyed through posters (fitting given Switzerland’s rich poster-art tradition.) Here are some of them.
Minimum
Wage
Legal
4000.
Fair, necessary, possible.
Yes on May 18
Interprofessional Union of Workers
With the minimum wage
I cannot find my
first job.
Thank you.
The Democratic Bourgeois Party Geneva
No to the minimum wage
With the minimum wage,
I will never find a job
as a farm worker.
Thank you
No to the minimum wage
Let’s make low wages take flight,
not the machinery of war.
Yes to the minimum wage. No to fighter jets.
Together to the Left
Citizen Movement Geneva Youth
No to the minimum wage.
A devious trap for the young!
Small business ↘ = unemployment ↗
Budget ↘ = Poverty ↗
After darkness Citizen Movement Geneva Youth
Yes
to the protection of wages,
to the minimum wage.
May 18, 2014
Syna Interprofessional Union
Stop dumping.
Protect
wages!
Yes to fair wages
to the minimum wage.
Vote on May 18, 2014
Unia inter-professional trade union
Young Radical Liberals Geneva
No minimum wage!
May 18
70%
of people
paid less
than 4,000.—
are
women
Yes to the 4,000 minimum wage
Solidarités (a self-described socialist, feminist, and environmentalist anti-capitalist group)
Want lower wages?
No to a Swiss inter-professional minimum wage!
Christian Democratic People’s Party of Switzerland
No
to the minimum-wage initiative.
Do not put in danger
jobs
and the social partnership
Radical Liberal Party
Having nobody
making less than
4,000 francs
is a question of
solidarity.
Yes to the minimum wage.
May 18
Intersyndical Cartel (a government and subsidized-sector employees union)