Recent interview with Valentin Vogt: “Switzerland suffers from a certain welfare neglect”

The cities of Zurich and Winterthur have approved the minimum wage. Do you see problems with the app?
The unions do not seem to accept referendums or collective agreements negotiated with us employers. They are now trying to achieve nationwide minimum wage targets with cantonal and municipal proposals. This approach will turn into its own goal. Why should our industry associations negotiate collective bargaining agreements if cantonal and local minimum wages are overridden by unions?

So it’s also a kind of defeat. What was the most painful?
Initiative against mass immigration. We just lost it. But it was also the only vote lost on European policy during my tenure.

SVP mobilizes against immigration once again – a danger to Switzerland as a workplace?
Another election year (laughs). SVP’s main problem is immigration. But it’s about maintaining the standard of living and well-being in Switzerland. Our country has never been more livable than it is today: we have excellent infrastructure, excellent public transport and greater prosperity for the vast majority of the population than ever before.

Can’t we maintain our standard of living without immigration?
We will always be dependent on immigration. Even if we employers, whether women, older workers, young people or people with disabilities, do everything we can to make even better use of the available local potential. In the next ten years, we will be deprived of nearly half a million workers who cannot be replaced without migration.

Are you afraid for our welfare?
If only the framework conditions in Switzerland had improved over the last 12 years. At the very least, we managed to make sure they weren’t largely spoiled. But the development is alarming: Like a salami, we slice through the successful Swiss model and realize it’s probably too late that soon the metal clip on the end of the salami will just fall into our hands. This worries me.

What specifically threatens the Swiss success model?
Switzerland suffers from a certain welfare neglect. Prosperity is very high in Switzerland. But the worst enemy of the good, as is well known, is the good. Today we’ve reached a level where everyone wants a little more, but few care how the cake grows. It’s all about who gets more of the same size cake – that really gets us nowhere.

Is your criticism also directed at young workers?
When you grow up in an environment where everything is going well, it’s hard to know that things could be different. We have managed economically all the crises of the last few years – the euro debt crisis, the abolition of the minimum exchange rate, the epidemic and the Ukraine war. I hope it doesn’t take a major economic crash for people to understand where our prosperity really comes from. The more than two billion gross domestic product Switzerland produces every day is not falling from the sky. For this, we all have to work hard every day.

Are fewer and fewer people realizing this?
Many believe that well-being and the end-of-month payday are human rights. However, every company must first make sure that it has produced the money to pay its salaries at the end of the month. Even when things don’t go so well. The understanding that our well-being cannot be taken lightly seems to have disappeared.

There is a shortage of skilled workers. Do young people have the upper hand and can they demand something from employers?
Social partnership in companies is not based on the superiority of employees, but on talking to each other and considering different needs. For example, by offering the opportunity to work from home or by advertising 80 to 100 percent positions. As an employer, you must prioritize the needs of your employees more than before.

So why are more and more companies calling their employees back into the office?
In the industrial environment where I work, two-thirds of the employees work in the office and one-third in production. A machinist or drill rig operator cannot take his machine home. This creates social tensions in the factories. The home office will be part of the future. However, this requires clear rules and each company must set them individually.

What does it take for women and men to have truly equal rights in business?
We’ve come a long way on this topic. When it comes to education, opportunities and wages, equity has long been or has been largely achieved. We still have a lot of work to do to increase incentives for higher workloads. But working harder than the individual taxation keyword should also really be worth the effort.

Part time with family is ok, not part time for work-life balance?
There are currently 130,000 vacancies in Switzerland. I’m just asking myself: Where will all the effort come from to fill this void? The simplest recipe: make people who work 60 percent work 80 percent or more, for example. I have nothing against part-time work, the question is simple: how much money can Switzerland devote to part-time work?

I think a lot.
Yes, yes, but we must be careful not to catch up with other more hardworking countries, such as Asia. We must also create better framework conditions for employees who want to work harder. There is no incentive to work further. On the contrary: the call for less work is heard everywhere – not for more.

But will you work less in the future?
My goal is to become more entrepreneurial again after leaving the presidency and stay professionally active until 70. Today, I regularly get up at half past 4 in the morning, do sports and go to bed between 22:00-23:00. If I can’t start my daily routine before half past six in the future, that’s fine either. I’m also looking forward to being a private person again, no longer a public figure. As the head of employer, you can never really close.