On October 1st, the Council of States had adopted a motion to penalise companies that recruit employees from abroad to the detriment of the local workforce, thus violating Switzerland’s established employment rules.
According to the motion, employers could face sanctions if they refuse to hire a person deemed suitable by the Regional Employment Centre (ORP), offering the job instead to applicants “not considered part of the Swiss labour market.”
Aside from fines, companies found violating this rule would be excluded from the allocation of work permit quotas for third-country workers.
READ MORE: Swiss MPs want to penalise companies which snub Switzerland-based candidates
All this brings up a question of who has a priority to Swiss jobs.
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‘Pecking order’
Think of the labour market’s ‘pecking order’ as an inverted triangle.
At the very top are all those who have first dibs at jobs in Switzerland.
That ‘priority’ group includes Swiss nationals as well as citizens of the European Union and EFTA nations – Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein.
They have equal right to jobs, meaning that Swiss candidates can’t be favoured over their EU/EFTA counterparts, as both have, under the terms of the Free Movement of Persons agreement, the same access to jobs.
Also included in this top-tier group are people – regardless of their nationalities – who are already employed in Switzerland under the B or C permit.
There are, however, some exceptions to this rule.
According to Samuel Wyss, a spokesperson for the State Secretariat for Migration, the so-called ‘freedom of contract’ — the process under which employers can decide on certain matters by themselves — gives companies some hiring leeway, without actually breaking the law.
Therefore, “an employer in Switzerland is free to decide whether to hire a national or an EU/EFTA employee,” Wyss said.
And a study carried out by the Employment Observatory of the University of Geneva confirmed that a number of employers do just that.
“The behaviour of companies shows that [when hiring] they are taking local candidates into greater consideration,” said Professor Yves Flückiger, who led the study.
“If Swiss companies hire foreign workers, it is because regional workforce does not match their specifications.”
Lower layers
Moving down the inverted triangle we find people who have the most restricted access to Swiss jobs – those from outside the EU and EFTA.
They are subject to a quota system and are only authorised to move to Switzerland if they meet all the criteria, including their education level (university) and in-demand skills that can’t be found among those already present in Switzerland.
READ MORE: How can non-EU nationals apply for a Swiss work visa?
In practice, however, there is some (legal) leeway.
Swiss economy needs highly qualified specialists and senior executives with advanced degrees and significant professional experience, who can’t be easily found on the Swiss market or, for that matter, among the EU/EFTA candidates abroad.
In these cases, international companies sometimes hire directly from countries like the US and the UK.
