The results of the BVG reform – News

• Years of reform work on the second pillar have failed.
• After all ballots were counted, the population rejected the proposal with 67.1 percent of the votes against.

Overall, the final results from the cantons showed 1,655,300 votes against and 810,800 in favor of the BVG reform. Voter turnout was around 45 percent.

A look at the voting map shows a rare unity: all cantons rejected the proposal. The proportion of no votes ranged from 57 percent in Zug to 77 percent in Jura and Neuchâtel. In around fifty municipalities, the no vote was over 81 percent. Only 26 of 2126 municipalities supported the pension fund reform.

The no vote at the ballot box was not surprising. However, the clarity of the result is astonishing: the latest polls predicted a no vote of 51 percent.

Political scientist: “Enter blank if templates are too complicated”

Political scientist Lukas Golder assumes that many people left the voting box on the BVG reform blank because of insurance. “When in doubt, people prefer not to change anything and say: If parliament or the government wants me to, I have to be convinced.” And that didn’t happen this time.”

The proposal was highly controversial during the referendum campaign. Those in favor spoke of a “good compromise,” while opponents described the reform as “miserable and abysmally bad.” One of the issues being discussed was the complexity of the proposal. The incorrect figures on AHV published by the federal government were also evidently grist to the opponents’ mill.

The “no” vote means that the reform backlog in pension provision remains. Since the introduction of the second pillar in 1985, the Federal Law on Occupational Retirement, Survivors’ and Disability Pensions (BVG) has only been comprehensively reformed once, namely in the 2000s. Since then, several attempts at reform have failed. Now work is starting again from scratch.

Status quo regarding the minimum conversion rate

The failed BVG reform was intended to financially stabilize the second pillar of retirement provision, against the backdrop of the growing number of pensioners, increasing life expectancy and falling returns. The minimum conversion rate for calculating rents in the compulsory part of the insurance would have fallen from 6.8 to 6 percent.

This is not going to happen now. The other points of the reform are also not being implemented: people with low incomes should have been better protected in old age, but they and their employers should also have paid more into the second pillar.

According to the federal government, the pension fund reform would have primarily affected employed persons who are insured at the BVG minimum or only slightly more. Who would have benefited from the reform as intended would have depended on their personal situation.

Success for the Left

The no vote is a success for the Left. Once again, it has managed to convince the majority of the population on a social policy issue. The campaign, led by the Swiss Federation of Trade Unions (SGB), focused on the slogan that more people had suffered from the reform than skills.

The business umbrella associations Economiesuisse and the Employers’ Association and representatives of the bourgeois parties SVP, FDP and Mitte as well as the GLP, on the other hand, described the BVG reform as long overdue and advocated a yes vote.