After UBS buys Credit Suisse, employees fear mass layoffs

Logo of the Swiss bank Credit Suisse, Zurich, Switzerland. AP - Ennio Leanza

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3 min

After the announcement of the acquisition of Credit Suisse by its competitor UBS, the 20,000 employees of the Swiss bank, relieved at first, quickly became worried. So far, information about their professional future has remained very succinct. At the government's press conference on Sunday, March 19, their situation was not even mentioned. All Credit Suisse employees now fear a massive redundancy plan.

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The express but reluctant bailout of Credit Suisse by UBS under pressure from the Swiss government and regulators has sent shockwaves through the country, where the banking sector carries a significant weight.

UBS will pay an almost symbolic sum of 3 billion Swiss francs (just over three billion euros) in shares for agreeing to take over a bank on the verge of collapse. In addition, the federal government offers a guarantee of CHF 9 billion in the event of an unpleasant surprise and the central bank makes available up to CHF 100 billion if necessary.

But it is the redundancies of the two largest banks in Switzerland and elsewhere that worry employees. The two giants currently have around 120,000 employees worldwide, including around 37,000 in Switzerland. Once the merger takes place, there is a chance that many of these jobs will become redundant. "Directly or indirectly, tens of thousands of jobs are potentially threatened," warned the Swiss Trade Union Union (USS), which represents 21,3 employees in the country, on Tuesday 000 March.

«The creation of a task force »

For Benoit Gaillard, head of communication at the USS, it is inconceivable that employees find themselves on the front line. "What we are obviously demanding is that it is not now the employees who pay the bill for the failure to manage this bank, for the instability of the financial system, and then finally for a system against bank failures that simply did not work while the right-wing parliamentary majority in Switzerland had guaranteed that the lessons had been learned from the 2008 crisis.

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So we asked this Tuesday morning for the creation of a task force, a special group between UBS-Credit Suisse and then the authorities, since there is public money involved, the central state cannot get rid of its responsibilities, "explains Benoit Gaillard.

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At this stage, he continues, we still have only very general inputs. We are asking very clearly that this group be operational by the end of March, and that we take stock very quickly, and especially that we also force the leaders of the two entities to plan what will ultimately be a merger of the two organizations. What we are asking in particular is that there be no redundancies before the end of this reorganization, that the number of redundancies be reduced to a minimum, and then obviously that in particular, employees over 55 years of age be specially protected."

While there is currently a shortage of skilled workers in the Swiss financial sector, the Swiss Association of Bank Employees (Aseb) fears that the number of job losses is too high for the labour market to absorb.

► Read also: The Swiss banking model shaken

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