Found an error?
Report now
On December 9, 1974, Jean-Pierre Bonny, then Director of the Federal Office for Industry, Trade and Labour (Biga), presented the results of the expert commission in Bern on what a future compulsory and uniform unemployment insurance scheme could look like.
Keystone
Almost one hundred years after the first unemployment insurance fund was founded, less than twenty percent of all Swiss employees were insured against unemployment in the 1970s. It was the oil crisis of 1974 that paved the way for a compulsory scheme.
The oil crisis hit the Swiss economy hard - and gave new impetus to the call for compulsory insurance for employees. At the beginning of 1974, a commission of experts headed by Jean-Pierre Bonny, Director of the Federal Office for Industry, Trade and Labor (Biga), looked into the revision of unemployment insurance.
At the time, the Swiss economy was at the height of a decade-long upswing. Only very few people were actually affected by unemployment: Only 81 people were registered without work at the time. When Bonny presented the final report to the media a few months later, the situation on the labor market had changed drastically. Unemployment figures had risen rapidly in the fall of 1974 - from 92 in September to over 2000 in December.
While the economic upturn in previous years had tended to slow down the will to reform, a solution was now urgently needed. The oil crisis had hit the Swiss economy and its labor market hard. The more than 2.5 million employees were ill-prepared for this: Only just under twenty percent were insured against unemployment at the time - with more than 150 different insurers.
The first private provident fund was founded in Switzerland as early as 1884. The first public fund followed in 1893. The system at the time was organized on a voluntary basis and was highly fragmented. If an industry slipped into a crisis, its funds immediately collapsed without risk equalization. And as an exporting country, global economic crises hit Switzerland particularly hard.
Until 1975, these company and industry funds provided income replacement - although employees could use this to bridge a temporary loss of earnings, the system was unable to react to long-term changes until it was reformed. Prevention or retraining were also not offered.
The federal government and trade unions were well aware of this risk: Together with the employers' side, they created a federal compensation fund as early as 1942. At the time, the Federal Council feared that mass unemployment could set in after the Second World War.
However, when the economy boomed after the war, the will for reform waned considerably. A national compulsory insurance scheme for employees was not introduced for the time being.
Who should be included in the new insurance scheme raised a number of questions for the commission. In the end, it proposed that all employees should be insured - regardless of their salary. The cost of the insurance premiums should be split 50:50 between employees and employers. Instead of the fragile system of isolated funds, the central compensation fund was to enable risk equalization between sectors and companies.
On June 13, 1976, the time had come: the new system was approved by a clear majority of voters. However, it would be another twenty years before the regional employment centers (RAV) were introduced.
https://visual.keystone-sda.ch/preview/-/preview/open/278671852/detail?_ch_keystone_liferay_preview_portlet_PreviewPortlet_searchCriteria=2393453&_ch_keystone_liferay_preview_portlet_PreviewPortlet_closeUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fvisual.keystone-sda.ch%2Fweb%2Fguest%2Flightbox%2F-%2Flightbox%2Fpage%2F2393453%2F1%3Fts%3D1777546574630
07.06.2026, 12:01
