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After the restaurateurs, the fitness bosses deplore the conditions of financial support for companies from the Confederation.
After Gastrosuisse, it is the turn of the Swiss Federation of Fitness and Health Centers (FSCF) to strongly criticize the conditions for financial support to Confederation companies, fixed for 2022 in the COVID-19 Ordinance in the event of rigor in consultation.
In a position paper addressed to the Federal Department of Finance (DFI), of which the “SonntagsBlick” became aware, the FSCF considers it particularly shocking that only studios which had already announced a reduction in working hours or which already receive compensation for loss of Covid-19 earnings may claim them in the future.
“I manage a fitness myself and have always tried to circumvent partial unemployment for my employees. Now I’m being punished for it.”
Which “excludes virtually all fitness centers”. For Claude Ammann, president of the FSCF, it is a prescription with “totally absurd” obligations. “I manage a fitness myself and have always tried to circumvent partial unemployment for my employees. Now, I am being punished for this,” he laments.
In its response to the consultation on the DFI project, the FSCF proposes to take into account not only cases of hardship from 2022, but also retroactively, from the summer of 2021. However, Bern aims that companies affected by the health restrictions are “adapting on their own” to the developments of the pandemic, as the DFI writes in the explanations relating to the project. For example, by carrying out restructuring or abandoning non-essential investments, or even by reducing their operating costs.
Support from the left
The DFI project also arouses criticism on the left. “The state simply does not want to save SMEs in difficulty without their being responsible for it. This is the spirit of this ordinance and the objective of this change of system”, declared the national councilor Regula Rytz (The Greens / BE) to the “SonntagsBlick” two weeks ago. The left now wants to demand improvements in Parliament’s Economics Committee, according to the Sunday newspaper.
(ewe)
