Hello, everyone! We are speaking here on behalf of the Partenza group, and this year we would like to share a few thoughts on the theme of this event: “Defend Jobs and Wages – No to Isolation.” We would like to address three points. First, we will discuss the role that work plays in our society. Second, we will examine the impact of international competition on the situation of the working population. Third, we will look at how the state treats foreign workers, whom it needs for its economic growth. Finally, we will summarize and draw conclusions, and briefly tell you a little about Partenza.

The Role of Work in our Society

When a company employs workers, it has them work toward the success of the business. Business success is measured by whether the products manufactured and sold generate a profit. The size of the profit depends on how well the company can compete against its rivals. Profit means that revenue must exceed the cost of purchasing all the components needed to manufacture the products for sale, including labor. This makes it clear: the lower the cost of labor, the more advantageous it is for the business. Workers are therefore expected to accept the lowest possible wages. Furthermore, they must be available to meet the company’s operational demands; that is, as many as the business currently needs must be reliably present, and they must be able to reliably perform whatever the company requires of them. A company makes its paid staff work more intensively or for longer hours, whenever possible, to maximize its profit. However, simply getting the most out of the workforce is not enough for profit. Additional workers who are not currently in wage labor but are on standby are a boon to the pursuit of profit. This allows a company to tap into a pool of freely available workers for its profit-making. For companies, this pool is a huge plus. And this “reserve army” has the added benefit that, due to their poor income situation, they can be blackmailed into accepting low wages, and this blackmail leads to a race to the bottom with the already employed workforce – naturally a beneficial effect for the companies. This is wage dumping, and it’s a familiar phenomenon. 

With everything we’ve mentioned, it’s important to understand that workers are not to blame for wage dumping. Those responsible for wage dumping are companies that exploit people to meet their need for profitable labor. People’s poor income situation is advantageous for companies; they take advantage of it and are only too happy to pay low wages. Low wages are the lever companies use to cut costs and, hopefully, gain an edge over all other companies in the market, thereby destroying a lot of foreign business for their own benefit. 

When we think about today’s slogan, “Defend Jobs and Wages,” we ask ourselves: Do we really want to defend that?

The Subjects of International Competition and their Access to Workers according to their Needs

Today’s economy is globalized. Business calculations take the entire world into account, yet remain fundamentally unchanged. The entrepreneurial perspective on potential workforces, whom one lets work in order to turn an advance of money into more money, does not change simply because one is now a global player. On the one hand. On the other hand, even as a global player, one is still a company of a country, of a business location. The administrator of a location, the state, sets the economy and even the economic system in its country in motion. The state has a fundamental interest in the success of this economy, as it is its material foundation. In this respect, the state monitors market conditions at home. The state manages a location in such a way that the economic growth in its country progresses – and does so in competition with other economic locations. That is, the state monitors wage levels and the usability of the workforce to ensure that companies can advance their profit-making efforts – and does so in an international comparison. To drive its economic growth at the expense of foreign locations, the workforce pool that the state (legally) makes available to its companies is sometimes not large enough. The workforce pool is not large enough in cases where companies need very specific, skilled, and low-cost workers. Nor is it large enough when the workforce in the country can be utilized so advantageously that further economic growth is at stake because there simply aren’t enough unused workers in the country who can be put to work; even in cases where masses of people are employed and the economy is booming at a given moment, this large number of employees can become a barrier to further economic growth. If further growth requires additional workers, those already employed cannot be employed twice. Then, ideologically, there is talk of a “labor shortage,” which simultaneously facilitates unions with greater power to push through wage increases, thereby making labor too expensive. One really has to imagine how crazy that is: When the economy is doing too well, so to speak, it leads to its own downfall. Based on these considerations, policymakers expand the available workforce pool. The government opens the borders and brings in foreign workers as a mobile reserve. We’ll discuss how this process of bringing in workers as a mobile reserve works in the third point shortly. Sometimes, however, the workforce pool becomes too large for the domestic economy. This happens when technological progress can generate the profits that, until recently, required people to work for them. Or when there’s an economic crisis again and there are too many capitalistically unusable workers. Then the government tightens residency requirements, closes the borders, and the demand for remigration is increasingly discussed seriously in politics.

With everything we’ve mentioned, it’s important to understand that migration does not originate from the migrants themselves. Rather, migration is state-controlled and politically desired, particularly as an instrument of economic and labor market policy. Accordingly, people are sorted in a manner that is both brutal and expedient. And ultimately, migration is a matter regulated between states; “In recent years, Switzerland has developed instruments that allow it to pursue its interests in the field of migration while taking into account varying degrees of cooperation: migration dialogues, readmission agreements, migration agreements, visa facilitation agreements, agreements on visa exemptions for holders of diplomatic, service, or special passports, visa exemption agreements, internship programs, and migration partnerships” (SEM website). Migration is a matter regulated between states, and the contracting parties expect to gain an advantage at the expense of the other contracting party. The lists of offers and demands are certainly very diverse. We argue, however, that the pattern of negotiation is essentially very simple: The one side, which wants cheap and useful labor for its economic growth, seeks to extract as much as possible from these people while giving as little as possible in return – for example, in terms of social benefits for the workers or other concessions to the contracting party. The other side usually has masses of poor people to offer, and will hand them over if it can secure something in return for the usefulness of its people in the host country, such as foreign policy benefits or remittances. This reveals just how cynically and brutally they treat their populations, and how those affected come across in this context: as part of a maneuvering mass of states.

When we think again of today’s motto, “No to Isolation,” we ask ourselves: Are such agreements really worth defending?

Permit and Treatment

Opening the borders and taking in cheap labor – that’s so easy to say. Even the phrase “the boat is full,” which is often invoked when politicians tighten immigration laws again, paints a picture of a boat that typically takes in those who are swimming. We therefore want to say a few words about the way the state treats the foreign nationals it admits into the country as cheap labor and as skilled workers. When the state admits migrants, they must meet the requirements that Switzerland sets as part of its permits – specifically, for short-stay (less than 1 year), residence (temporary), and settlement (permanent) permits. The requirements for these permits usually include having a full-time job, being able to support oneself financially with relying as little as possible on social assistance – or without relying on it at all –, and not being allowed to look for employers in Switzerland once you’re here – unless you’ve been here for a long time and have proven yourself to be a valuable worker for Switzerland. At least for citizens of EU/EFTA countries. Stricter requirements apply to third-country nationals, and quotas are checked – which essentially means, “We recruit beforehand only certain willing, capable, and inexpensive workers whom our companies can still use, and then they can leave right away.”

Historically, Switzerland had the seasonal worker statute, which regulated short-term stays for foreign workers. These foreign workers were brought into the country for the duration of a “season.” They were made to perform backbreaking labor, milked like a cow, separated from their families, and housed in barracks. Anyone who tried to resist total dependence on their employer and the miserable working conditions faced the threat of deportation. And once the “season” was over, they were thrown out again. Reading the “No 10-Million-Switzerland”-Initiative, one has to conclude that this is supposed to become the new normal. If an initiative is launched today that aims to limit Switzerland’s “permanent resident population,” then the adoption of this initiative does not mean that Switzerland wants to bring fewer people here. Rather, it means that Switzerland wants to bring people here with fewer rights.

Side note: The EU and Switzerland did not order the migration of large numbers of refugees to this region. War and poverty elsewhere are largely rooted in the enforcement of western state interests, and Switzerland can quite practically profit from this through arms trade. Of course, it is others than Western states who are expected to deal with the ugly consequences. In this case, they criminalize this migration, erect massive barriers across Europe, operate deportation detention centers, and offload the lawless violence onto North Africa. All so they do not have to honor their own asylum pledge.

Summary

The general thrust of the SVP’s argument goes something like this: “They come here, and then there are so many of them that they drive down wages, and then the standard of living for the local population declines because there are too many people competing for jobs – because the world is full of so many people who can’t find work in their home countries.” If we actually take this idea seriously, we might arrive at the following conclusion: If it’s true that when more people come here, they drive down wages, then there must be someone who has an interest in driving down wages; then the decline in prosperity that is feared is exactly what suits those who provide the jobs; what appears to be a threat to oneself is actually an opportunity for them. Once you realize this, you can’t possibly say that foreigners are the problem for you. Yet migrant workers and Swiss workers are in the same economic situation – they have to sell their workforce.

If, moreover, one imagines that the Swiss state protects – or should protect – one as a Swiss citizen from a flood of people, one is gravely mistaken. Switzerland manages crowds according to criteria that serve its own interests. Switzerland does not view people at all as who they are, and therefore as if it needed to protect itself from a flood of them. Rather, Switzerland views them brutally and expediently as a means to serve its own interests. They are to come when capital in the country has a need for them – they are to disappear again when capital no longer has a need for them. They are supposed to increase Switzerland’s wealth, but as soon as they cost anything, they become too many, and then they must go again. The state views these people brutally as a means of Swiss wealth – the wealth of the Swiss rich, not the Swiss poor – and this leads Switzerland to want to integrate these people into the unemployment fund, into the pension fund, so that they can function as this means at all. So that this maneuvering mass can reproduce itself as a means for ruinous profit-making, Switzerland shoves these people into the social welfare system, the one the Swiss are already stuck in and mistakenly consider a privilege.

When Swiss citizens say that the state cares for its people – or should care for them –politicians respond by saying that they manage Switzerland’s wealth on behalf of the people, that politics is concerned with Switzerland’s economic success. Once again, the general population is merely a means to an end. But one shouldn’t take that seriously; of course, one shouldn’t see oneself in a subordinate economic role for the sake of this society’s wealth; one shouldn’t see oneself as opposed to the employer for whom one is a means. Rather, one should see oneself as a beneficiary of Switzerland’s success in the world, which one supposedly shares in – in reality, one must contribute the surplus for this success and carry the deficit home. Nowhere is it truly clear that the state is there for the wellbeing of its population – neither when it comes to pensions, nor wages or working conditions, not with health insurance, and certainly not in the event of a war for the fatherland. And of all things, when Switzerland takes action against those who, in its view, do not belong here, that is supposed to be proof enough that the state cares about you.

Closing Words

Ultimately, this means that the slogan “Defend Jobs and Wages – No to Isolation” remains too narrow in scope. While we share the criticism of division and scapegoating, we hopefully have shown that these developments are logical consequences of the existing system. Merely defending wages and jobs within this system therefore does little to change the fundamental conditions. Change would only be possible if working people – regardless of passport or origin – united to resist the structures in which a small minority profits from rising living costs, stagnant wages, and worsening working conditions. What would be decisive, then, would not be guaranteed jobs, stable wages, and a less isolationist Switzerland, but an economic system in which people themselves, with their needs and their lives, are the true purpose of society.

Partenza

We’re at the end and would like to talk a bit about the Partenza group. We’re a group of politically active people from Thun and the surrounding area. We want to help connect people who are dissatisfied with their living conditions and arrive at a shared criticism. We’re currently organizing the “Jour fixe,” a monthly open meeting where we discuss current events around the world, try to explain them, and put them into context. Anyone interested is welcome to sign up for our mailing list. By the way, we’re still here, and we’d be happy to talk if you think we’re exaggerating, or saying things that aren’t true, or if you think, “I might not enjoy going to work every day, but I actually like doing my job,” or if you feel we’ve forgotten to mention important things, or if you say, “The state – it’s not just a single person, it’s complex” – we’re interested in getting to know you and take what you have to say seriously.

Thank you very much for your attention!