At the start of the summer session, a broad alliance of 110 organizations sent an appeal to the National Council. The occasion is the discussion of the "halving initiative", which calls for a significant reduction in public funding for the SRG. The appeal was initiated by the media trade union SSM.
Under the entitled "It's about more than SRG", the letter was to all members of parliament last week. The appeal is not only directed against the initiative itself, but also against any counter-proposals that would further restrict the framework conditions for the public media service.
The signatory organizations come from various areas of society, including culture, sport, education, inclusion, the media industry and employee representatives. Together, they are campaigning for a strong, independent public media service.
In the view of the initiators, the initiative does not only affect the SRG. The visibility of linguistic minorities, the diversity of information and opinions and social cohesion in quadrilingual Switzerland are also at risk. "Cultural and sports offerings in particular, as well as services that promote inclusion, are especially at risk if the initiative is accepted," reads a statement from the SSM.
If the initiative is rejected, the partial revision of the Radio and Television Ordinance (RTVO) adopted by the Federal Council will come into force. This provides for a reduction in the household fee to CHF 300 by 2029 and an exemption from the fee for 80% of companies. This will reduce the annual contribution to SRG by CHF 120 million, which corresponds to a decrease of 17%.
The undersigned organizations already see the planned reduction in fees as a substantial cut. A further reduction through the initiative or additional proposals would endanger the basic media supply in Switzerland.
On Monday, representatives of the organizations reminded parliamentarians of their arguments with an action on the Bundesplatz.
]]>
The new CLA was negotiated as part of the relicensing process for the period 2025-2034. Licensed radio stations had to commit to the Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) to industry-standard working conditions. The industry agreement 25 sets out the standards for this. The newly licensed radios Vostok (Unikom) and Gwendalyn (Corall) are now also covered by the CLA.
The minimum wage for employees in the sector will rise from CHF 4,700 to CHF 5,050 per month for 13 monthly salaries. Employees working a 42-hour week will now receive six weeks' vacation, compared to five weeks for those working 40 hours. In addition, binding measures have been introduced to protect personal privacy, which must be set out in personnel regulations. Interns will also be included in the CLA in future, although wages are still being negotiated between the social partners.
Not all local radio stations are part of the agreement. Radio Toxic.fm will no longer be represented in the industry agreement, and Radio X did not take part in the negotiations. They will continue to be subject to the working conditions for private radio stations, which include a 13th month's salary and pension fund contributions from the first franc earned.
The social partners see the new CLA as an important step towards fair working conditions in the media sector. It should contribute to quality assurance in the sector and create a sustainable basis for media professionals in the local radio stations concerned.
]]>
Losing the federal subsidy of just under 19 million francs would effectively spell the end of the ten-language platform Swissinfo.ch, the SSM wrote in a press release on Friday.
In addition to Swissinfo, SRG's international programming includes the Italian-language website tvsvizzera.it as well as collaborations with the television networks TV5 Monde and 3sat. It is funded equally by the federal government and SRG.
According to the SSM, 100 permanent employees and more than a hundred freelancers will be laid off as a result of the cut in funding for Swissinfo. This would mean another serious blow for Switzerland as a media center and a further loss of media diversity. The SSM will therefore express its opposition in the upcoming consultation process.
The SRG itself confirmed in a statement that without federal funding, it would be unable to maintain its international programming. This would have serious consequences and pose a significant disadvantage both for Swiss citizens living abroad and for Switzerland’s presence abroad. Switzerland would thus severely limit its ability to explain its decisions abroad, as well as to provide a platform for its artists and cultural productions abroad.
Like the SSM union, the SRG also pointed out that Swissinfo serves as an important link between Swiss citizens living abroad and their home country.
The Swissinfo platform was originally created as the successor to Swiss Radio International. It had already undergone a major restructuring by the end of 2011. At that time, the SRG had announced that it would cut approximately 40 of 126 positions by the end of 2012. The budget of 26 million had been cut by a third. The Federal Council subsequently extended the platform’s mandate for international operations on a regular basis. (SDA)
]]>
On Thursday, the SSM unveiled its new corporate design at the delegates' meeting, which includes a new logo as well as a new logo. a new website includes. The visual makeover underlines "the SSM's commitment to continuous development and renewal", the media union writes in a press release. Even after 50 years, the union is not tired of facing new challenges and standing up for the interests and rights of media professionals in Switzerland.
Proud history and a look into the future
Since it was founded in 1974 in Origlio TI, the SSM has been fighting with its members for good conditions in the media industry and a strong public media service. A look back shows that wages, equal working conditions, media diversity and public service are recurring core issues that have shaped the SSM's trade union work.
"Much of what we take for granted today is thanks to the tireless efforts of the trade unions," says Co-President Salvador Atasoy. "Shortly after the SSM was founded, the collective labor agreement (CLA) with SRG was a key issue, and the introduction of the 40-hour week in 1988 marked a significant milestone in the improvement of working conditions."
Co-President Rafaël Poncioni adds that there is still a lot to do: "Especially in view of the attack on the public media service by the halving initiative."
At the Assembly of Delegates, the SSM adopted resolutions on the defense of the public service and the implementation of the agreement on working conditions.
]]>
For almost ten years, Silvia Dell'Aquila managed the affairs of the Aargau/Solothurn region of the VPOD union. During this time, she represented the union for public service employees in various cantonal committees and negotiating delegations, initiated and led campaigns, and accompanied collective as well as individual labor law conflicts. Within the regional federation, she has driven further development and strongly shaped it over the past decade. Now Silvia Dell'Aquila is leaving the VPOD Aargau/Solothurn and will be working for the media union SSM as Central Secretary as of November 2023.
A familiar face is returning for the SSM. Dell'Aquila already worked for the media union as from 2010 to 2014, at that time as Specialist Secretary Private Media. Silvia Dell'Aquila remains President of the Aargau Federation of Trade Unions (AGB) and Vice President of the umbrella organization ArbeitAargau.
]]>
For employees aged 49 and over, the vacation entitlement is six weeks, as the employee representatives Schweizer Syndikat Medienschaffender SSM, Syndicom and Impressum announced on Thursday. On the employer side, the Association of Swiss Private Radio VSP and the regional television association Telesuisse negotiated the conditions.
The minimum wage applies to trained and permanent employees. In the future, the social partners will pay pension fund contributions on the entire salary without coordination deduction. During statutory maternity leave, employers pay the full salary.
In addition, program creators can now submit copyrighted contributions in competitions and publish them on their own, non-commercial website two weeks after the first broadcast. According to the employee representatives, the background to the agreement is the new licensing of private radio and TV stations. (SDA)
]]>
The Board of Directors of SRG had decided in November last year to integrate a previous so-called "variable" salary component into the fixed salary of the cadres from 2023, as the media office of the news agency Keystone-SDA announced on Monday upon request. Over the weekend, CH Media had reported on adjustments to the salary system.
In the past, however, the variable component had "not been a bonus dependent on the company's results and paid voluntarily," but part of "the contractually agreed and insured salary." Accordingly, it amounted to around 20 percent.
This percentage was usually achieved, but in the new system it is now fixed at 100 percent. For this reason, the average salary of management staff and the total salary sum have not changed.
Staff salaries decreased
In a statement on Monday, the SSM union welcomed "the end of the archaic system". This was because the variable component had sometimes allowed for the rewarding of goals that could not be controlled, such as savings achieved through job cuts.
However, it regrets that "in this time of crisis" management salaries have not been reduced "significantly" at the same time. In fact, staff salaries have declined overall in recent years. The union therefore expects SRG's senior management "to also reduce their salaries in solidarity," it said.
Also in other companies
The Federal Office of Communications Bakom wrote in response to a request that SRG had informed the Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications Uvek in December about the system change in executive compensation.
The integration of the variable component into the fixed salary had also been decided in other Swiss companies. However, the determination of the compensation of the SRG Executive Board members is not a matter for the federal government, but for the SRG itself.
According to SRG's annual report, Director General Gilles Marchand earned CHF 532,857 in 2020, while Chairman of the Board Jean-Michel Cina earned CHF 153,300 per year with a 50 percent job. The seven members of the Executive Board received an average of 389,702 francs. (SDA)
]]>
With the improved collective labor agreement, which comes into force on January 1, 2022 and is initially valid until the end of 2025, SRG is sending a positive signal, writes SSM. SRG is prepared to "guarantee decent conditions for the work of its employees" even in times when the media industry is in crisis. This contributes to the quality of SRG productions.
The collective labor agreement should have been renewed already this year. However, several rounds of negotiations had to be canceled in 2020 due to the corona pandemic. As a result, SSM and SRG agreed to extend the current contract until the end of 2021. (SDA)
]]>
Apple had announced a system for tracking down child pornography photos. As a result, critics warned that an authoritarian state could try to sneak pictures with political motives into the database in order to find out who has them on their cell phones.
The concerns of the journalists' associations of the German-speaking countries aim in the same direction. As they write in a joint appeal to their state governments and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen published on Tuesday, they protest against the Apple company's intention.
Confidential information
All journalists have confidential content on their smartphones, former Swiss U.S. correspondent Priscilla Imboden of the SSM media union was quoted as saying in a press release. It cannot be that an American private company judges the admissibility of content and also wants to view and forward it.
It is a relatively short way from the alleged surveillance of the child porn scene to checking the user data of opponents of the regime in Turkey or the LGBT community in Hungary. Confidential data on smartphones would thus be put at risk, and research would be massively hampered.
Moreover, it is only a matter of time before what is starting in the U.S. comes to Europe. The journalists' associations are therefore calling on the relevant authorities to put a stop to the Apple group's plans for all European countries. (SDA)
]]>-(1)_0.jpg)
"Diverse and challenging cultural reporting in all parts of the country is part of SRG's core mission," the SSM wrote in a statement Tuesday. The Swiss Radio and Television Company SRG has a performance, supply and promotion mandate in the cultural sector and must also serve an audience outside the mainstream.
SRG is submitting to market logic and is making large-scale savings in cultural reporting in all parts of the country. In French-speaking Switzerland, the redesign of the cultural radio station Espace 2 was already completed last spring. The former culture station now broadcasts music. Audio and video contributions are increasingly found online.
According to SSM, the same is happening to the culture channel Rete Due in Italian-speaking Switzerland. The "Lyra" project that has been launched envisages a radical realignment of the cultural offering. Word contributions are to be significantly reduced and background broadcasts cut back.
At SRF Kultur, too, there was no end to the cutbacks. Other programs such as "Nachtflug" and "Fiori Musicali" on Radio SRF 2 would be canceled, would have to realign themselves and, like "Kulturplatz" and "DOK" on TV-SRF 1, would receive less funding. According to SSM, the cutbacks associated with the company-wide development of online formats are causing great uncertainty among employees.
According to the SSM, culture holds society together and is more important than ever. However, cultural production in Switzerland is in the greatest crisis in decades. The SSM considers it devastating that SRG is now further weakening the Swiss cultural scene by cutting qualified cultural reporting. (SDA)
The proposals were submitted to the National and Council of States Commissions for Transport and Telecommunications (KVF), as announced by Impressum, Syndicom and SSM on Thursday. The proposals to the commissions consist of a package: during the crisis, newspapers and magazines are to be delivered free of charge by Swiss Post. Furthermore, the subscriptions of the information media at the news agency Keystone-SDA should be financed by the federal government.
A fund of CHF 100 million is also intended to help media outlets out of financial difficulties and to finance journalistic research. And the reserve for planning deviations from the radio and television levy, which is budgeted at CHF 34.2 million for 2020, is intended primarily to support licensed private radio and television stations and audiovisual production in their particularly difficult situation.
Virtually all editorial media are reporting unprecedented demand for editorial information, the report continues. This is reflected in record click-through numbers, as well as online subscriptions and newsstand sales of newspapers, and even direct donations to editorial offices. However, the Corona crisis has led to extreme declines in sales on the advertising market, and many media are therefore on the verge of bankruptcy.
The undersigned organizations consider it an important public interest that journalistic information be maintained for the population, all the more so in the extraordinary situation.
The following professional organizations submitted the proposals: Syndicom, Impressum, Investigativ.ch, Media Forti, Medien mit Zukunft, Medien für alle, Association romande des producteurs audiovisuels and Schweizerisches Syndikat Medienschaffender SSM. (SDA)
The procedure does not do justice to a proper consultation, writes the SSM in a statement. Until November 16, savings proposals could be sent to an e-mail address. However, the SRG is "neither willing to provide necessary background information nor working time for an in-depth analysis". In doing so, it was breaking its verbal promise that staff could work out alternative proposals during working hours. SRG had announced on Tuesday that it would cut 200 jobs over the next four years. Originally, there was talk of 250 jobs. As a trade union, the SSM represents employees in the electronic media. (SDA)