Switzerland

International round-up

Selection of short international news stories

International round up

Strike over cuts in Switzerland | Madrid march against violence

Deflation is driving the currency chaos

The global financial system suffered an unexpected jolt last week

Swiss vote against migrant workers gives boost to racists

Some 50.3 percent of voters rejected freedom of movement for workers from European Union (EU) countries in a Swiss referendum last week.

Swiss government clamps down on asylum seekers

Apartheid-style new asylum rules in some Swiss towns will bar refugees from specified public places.

Baggage handlers put their case Swissport baggage handlers at Stansted airport struck for all four days of the long weekend last week. The workers, in the Unite and GMB unions, are fighting plans to make them work 14 extra days a year with no extra pay.

Switzerland's vote to ban minarets boosts European racists

01 December 2009
Across Europe, racists have cheered the result of last Sunday’s referendum in Switzerland, which saw a vote to impose a ban on the building of minarets on mosques.

Deal but no deal for airport workers

01 September 2009
Baggage handlers at Gatwick, Stansted and Manchester airports last week voted to strike after their employer, Swissport, reneged on a two-year pay deal.

Which economy will be bottom?

03 February 2009
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) put Britain at the bottom of the class in its revised forecast for the world economy last week. At the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Gordon Brown was forced to refute suggestions that London was now "Reykjavik on The Thames" – a reference to Iceland’s economic crash.

Swissport accept deal

02 September 2008
Workers at Swissport have voted to accept an improved pay offer of 4 percent for 2008-2009 backdated to 1 April.

Bank holiday baggage handlers’ wage strike

19 August 2008
Baggage handlers and check-in staff working for Swissport have voted to take strike action after workers rejected a below-inflation pay offer.

What’s behind the credit crisis?

11 December 2007
Four months after it exploded, the international credit crisis seems to be getting worse. On Monday the giant Swiss bank UBS announced losses of $10 billion.

Liberation of the sexes

23 October 2007
It was socialist women who made the first international appeal against the First World War, at a March 1915 conference organised by German revolutionary Clara Zetkin in Switzerland.

Stansted workers are angry over pay

26 August 2006
About 500 GMB and T&G union members, working for Swissport at Stansted airport were due to strike this weekend.

Slaughter at the Somme

01 July 2006
On 1 July 1916, 150,000 British soldiers went "over the top" on the Western Front to attack the German trenches in the Somme region. The front, along which British and French armies confronted the German army, stretched from Switzerland to the Channel.

Swiss isn’t neutral about racism and society

04 June 2005
Growing up in a working class area in South London, 22 year old Swiss began his musical career as an MC in a group called 2 Hype 2 Young with Sef, Mr Shabz, Megaman and Kaish.

Fighting for their jobs against British bosses

15 January 2005
WORKERS AT the Filtrona factory in Switzerland—owned by the British-based company Bunzl—are engaged in a bitter fight to save their factory from closure.

Airports

13 November 2004
Baggage handlers at GroundStar/Swissport at Stansted airport were celebrating victory this week after voting to strike over pay.

Heathrow in new walkout

15 November 2003
AROUND 1,000 TGWU members at Swissport UK and Cargo were set to hold their second 48-hour strike on Friday and Saturday.

'Time to stand up'

08 November 2003
AROUND 1,000 workers at Swissport UK and Swissport Cargo staged a 48-hour strike at Heathrow airport last Sunday and Monday. The workers are members of the TGWU union. Early on a wet and windy Sunday morning on the picket line, they told Socialist Worker why they were out: "We have been pushed from pillar to post. Our work load has increased dramatically. You don't get time to wipe your arse any more. A few years ago we moved around 100 tonnes per shift. Now its more like 225 tonnes," said one picket at the cargo depot. "We are under so much pressure," added another. "We want a pay rise. But it's about more than money."