The Bank Employees Association is calling on banks in Switzerland to increase wages by 3 to 5 percent, depending on the specific situation of the individual institutions.
Bank employees on low and medium salaries should receive general salary increases to offset inflation and compensate for the real wage loss suffered in recent years.
In addition, long-serving employees whose wages have not been increased for five years or more should now receive a pay rise.
The SBPV Executive Board decided on these wage demands at its meeting on 05.09.2024 after consulting various employee representatives.

In recent years, bank employees, like most employees in Switzerland, have suffered large real wage losses.
The high inflation in 2022 and 2023 was not even partially offset in most banks.
In a multi-year comparison, this results in a large real wage loss in the banking sector.
In other words, the majority of bank employees now earn less for the same work than they did five years ago. And this is despite the strong productivity gains resulting from the widespread introduction of flexible working arrangements since the coronavirus pandemic.

At the same time, the Swiss economy continues to perform well; the UBS Outlook Switzerland published at the beginning of July also forecasts robust economic growth of 1.5% for 2025.

The 2023 financial year was excellent for most banks. A number of institutions reported record-high profits and even profit growth that exceeded that of the already very good 2022 financial year.
The half-year results for 2024 published to date are also predominantly very good in a multi-year comparison.

And even though inflation is continuing to fall – the current forecast for 2024 is 1.2 to 1.5% – health insurance premiums, which are not included in the national index, are continuing to rise.
The rising cost of living is having a particularly significant impact on employees with lower salaries.
And many banks still have long-standing employees who have not received a pay rise for several years.
This has a negative impact on their sense of fairness and ultimately also on their motivation to work.
This is particularly true when you consider the very high compensation paid to members of the Executive Board and Board of Directors.

However, not all banks have the same need to catch up.
We recognize that the staff committees in some banks succeeded last year in pushing through general wage increases and, in some cases, disproportionately high wage increases for lower and middle incomes.
For this reason, we are refraining from making a blanket wage demand this year and are recommending that the staff committees we have consulted should set their wage demands within a range of 3 to 5 percent.
This depends on the varying degrees of real wage losses over the last five years and also on the specific earnings situation in the individual banks.

However, general wage increases for lower and middle-income earners are essential for us and manageable for employers.