Swiss accuse German 'job thieves'

The Swiss flag flaps in the breeze, the national anthem floats soothingly in the background. Suddenly the peaceful image is drowned by an oompah band, and the white cross on red is subsumed into the red, black and gold of the German flag. A sexy female voice asks: 'How many Germans can Switzerland take?'

This is not a comedy sketch, rather an advertising campaign by the Swiss tabloid Blick which is asking readers if they have had enough of 'cheap workers, arrogant expressions and objectionable self-confidence'. It has launched a new anti-German age.

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The frenzy has been sparked by a huge rise in recent years in the number of workers from Switzerland's neighbour, who come in search of employment and decent wages. They are filling positions in everything from waitressing to building, medicine to law, and in the process, say the Swiss, stealing jobs and pushing wages down.

Unlike in Germany, there are jobs aplenty in Switzerland - and the Swiss pay up to a third more, taxes are lower and the social welfare system is better than Germany's.

Swiss chat shows and documentaries have also taken up the call, 'Germans are taking away our jobs', while some newspapers are even running regular anti-German stories with such headlines as 'A German stole my girlfriend'.

In a recent survey 43 per cent of Swiss admitted they found the Germans arrogant, while 42 per cent said they had reason to complain about their presence. The image of Germans as big and brash is not helped by tax refugees such as Michael Schumacher, Boris Becker, and the yoghurt baron, Theo Muller, all of whom have homes there.

Switzerland, home to 7.5 million people, has been the Germans' favourite emigration country for the past two years, after stealing the number one slot from the United States.

More than 170,000 Germans have since settled there, according to the Bern Office for Migration. The numbers of migrants from what the Swiss jokingly refer to as the 'grosse Kanton' - or large canton - is increasing by an average of 21 per cent a year, or by a third since 2002.

Resentment has risen to the extent that German residents claim they are being increasingly insulted on streets and in restaurants by the usually peace-loving, conflict-shy Swiss with such slurs as 'Gashahn' - gas tap - a reference to the gas chambers and to gas-guzzling German cars - and sometimes even 'Nazikopf' or 'Nazi head'.

A Zurich expert on Germany, Peter von Matt, said: 'The larger [nation] is seen as cold, arrogant and materialistic, while the smaller one sees itself as the keeper of warmth and feelings.'

Jens-Rainer Wiese, 43, a German IT specialist who moved to Zurich six years ago, said most of his fellow countrymen were oblivious to the fact that they were not welcome: 'Germans don't realise how they are viewed. They are mainly seen as aggressive, impolite and boastful.'

But German Anja Grob, 47, who works in Basle, said the thick-skinned Germans were unlikely to stop coming. Switzerland's neutrality, she believed, was the biggest pull: 'A country that has not been at war for centuries is really something that Germans admire greatly.'

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