Vote on March 8, 2026 – The Council of State's position

No to the generic legislative popular initiative "Respect workers' rights! Let's fight wage dumping!" 
On this issue put to a vote at the cantonal level, the Council of State supports the goal of protecting the rights of workers in Ticino. However, the popular initiative is ineffective because it links the fight against low wages almost exclusively to increased inspections. Ticino already has by far the highest inspection rate in Switzerland, reaching between 25 and 30% of companies, compared to a national target of between 3 and 5% in sectors not covered by collective bargaining agreements. Increasing the number of inspectors and inspections does not lead to higher wages: it means higher costs for both the state and businesses, without benefiting workers. Experience shows that targeted inspections, based on risk analysis and timely reporting, are more effective than generalized ones.

We recall that following the 2016 vote, the number of inspection units in our canton has already doubled. Furthermore, the introduction of new generalized obligations would create more bureaucracy, also jeopardizing jobs in our canton.

Regarding the gender pay gap, the Canton already has targeted tools in place, from financial incentives to public procurement criteria. The initiative does not strengthen these measures, but adds an additional administrative burden that does not improve protection in specific cases of discrimination.

The initiative also entails significant recurring costs for the public body at a time when cantonal finances are already under particular pressure, without this financial effort bringing real benefits to our labor market.

In light of these considerations, the Council of State and the Grand Council call on the population to reject the initiative.

Information material on the cantonal vote, including easy language and sign language videos, will be available on the web page starting February 9, 2026.

No to the popular initiative "200 francs is enough!" (SSR Initiative)
On the issues put to the vote at the federal level, the State Council calls on the population to reject the federal popular initiative "200 francs is enough! (SSR Initiative)".

The Council of State—sharing the position of the Conference of Cantonal Governments—believes that such a drastic reduction in the radio and television license fee would prevent the SSR from continuing to fulfill its public service mandate satisfactorily in all linguistic and geographical regions of our country. Regional information would inevitably be weakened, as would the central role the SSR currently plays in fostering citizenship education, public debate, and national cohesion. This would result in a decline in media coverage, particularly in peripheral areas, and a significant weakening of the principle of territoriality that characterizes media consumption in the Swiss media landscape.

Furthermore, the cantonal government draws attention to the potential negative consequences for Italian-speaking Switzerland, should the bill be approved. The resulting reduction in funding available to the public broadcaster would almost certainly lead our linguistic community—which currently benefits from the regional financial equalization of license fee revenues relative to its actual population size, thanks to a 22% grant granted against 4% of revenue collected—to suffer drastic consequences in terms of employment and RSI's participation in cultural and sporting activities organized in our canton.

More generally, the approval of the initiative represents a clear risk to the national cohesion of our multilingual country, with a series of significant direct and indirect consequences for the Canton of Ticino as well.

For these reasons, the Council of State calls for the initiative to be rejected.