Switzerland may have the highest minimum wage in the world if the country votes on Sunday to increase the hourly wage to $25, USA Today reported.
In Switzerland, where its social democracy allows citizens to decide on policies, a $25 minimum wage would be a welcome raise for underpaid immigrants who work in the service industry. But some workers and their employers worry that the forced increase would be a strain on Swiss businesses, forcing layoffs and increased unemployment.
"The measure would eliminate a big number of low-skilled jobs performed by the very workers the legislation is supposed to help," Beat Kappeler, a former trade union economist, told USA Today. "It would be damaging in quantitative and qualitative ways."
Most of the country's workers, 90 percent, are already paid well above $25 per hour.
That percentage does not include people like Luisa Almeida, an immigrant from Portugal, who worries the wage increase would leave her out of a job.
"If my employer had to pay me more money, he wouldn't be able to keep me on and I'd lose my job," Almeida, who makes $3,250 a month as a housekeeper and a nanny, told USA Today.
While Swiss voters contemplate the wage increase, a minimum wage debate is also in full swing in the U.S. On Thursday fast-food workers in 150 cities across the country staged one-day strikes in demand of a $15 hourly wage, The New York Times reported. Protests were also staged in at least 30 countries, including Ireland, South Korea, Morocco and Italy.
A recent poll by the research institute gfs. bern found that 64 percent of Swiss citizens are against the referendum.
Patrick Belser, senior economist for the Geneva-based International Labor Office's Wage Group, said the economy will not suffer from the wage increase and that it could stop employees from being exploited, USA Today reported. But $25 "is probably a little too high," the economist added.
