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Swiss divided as 1:12 executive pay referendum nears [View all]
Source: The Guardian
Swiss divided as 1:12 executive pay referendum nears
John Hooper, southern Europe editor
The Guardian, Thursday 14 November 2013 15.52 GMT
To see just how far the revolt against fat cat pay has spread, you could do worse than visit a grey building a stone's throw from the open-air market and pavement cafes of the Bärenplatz in the medieval centre of Bern.
There, in the headquarters of Switzerland's Young Socialists (Juso), party workers are preparing for a referendum on 24 November that could see the Swiss vote to stop bosses earning more in a year than their worst-paid employees receive in a month.
The so-called 1:12 campaign is part of a broader drive for wealth redistribution by the Swiss left that has won wide popular support.
Long-standing rumblings about executive excess were fuelled by the banking crisis and the precarious position of the Swiss bank UBS. But the debate was supercharged this year when the Swiss drug group Novartis agreed to pay its outgoing chairman, Daniel Vasella, SFr72m (£49m). The payment, to persuade Vasella not to use his knowledge to help rival pharmaceuticals, was described as a "golden gag".
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John Hooper, southern Europe editor
The Guardian, Thursday 14 November 2013 15.52 GMT
To see just how far the revolt against fat cat pay has spread, you could do worse than visit a grey building a stone's throw from the open-air market and pavement cafes of the Bärenplatz in the medieval centre of Bern.
There, in the headquarters of Switzerland's Young Socialists (Juso), party workers are preparing for a referendum on 24 November that could see the Swiss vote to stop bosses earning more in a year than their worst-paid employees receive in a month.
The so-called 1:12 campaign is part of a broader drive for wealth redistribution by the Swiss left that has won wide popular support.
Long-standing rumblings about executive excess were fuelled by the banking crisis and the precarious position of the Swiss bank UBS. But the debate was supercharged this year when the Swiss drug group Novartis agreed to pay its outgoing chairman, Daniel Vasella, SFr72m (£49m). The payment, to persuade Vasella not to use his knowledge to help rival pharmaceuticals, was described as a "golden gag".
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/14/swiss-divide-1-12-executive-pay-referendum
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