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Jennings also spoke at the Nyon Labour Day celebrations where he joined Pierre-Yves Maillard, the next President of the Council of State in the Canton of Vaud, in calling for more progressive measures to grow jobs.

Jennings, in a number of interviews with the Swiss press said that the austerity measures are crippling Europe and that there are viable alternatives concentrating on growth and jobs.

Referring to the announcement by Merck in Geneva that 1,250 jobs are to go as it moves its headquarters to Germany, Jennings told Swiss radio and television RTS and the Tribune de Géneve that what is needed is a “Geneva Spring” with workers, the public and politicians rallying around the cause as they did in Nyon to prevent the planned closure of Novartis.

Jennings’ message that there was another path for the Merck management to take by exploring possible ways to save the jobs was picked up widely by the Swiss media. (See links to all the stories below.)

During his interview on RTS’s flagship morning news programme, Jennings detailed how the austerity measures have fueled the deficit, and urged Europe and the G20 to change direction and introduce positive labour policies such as training programmes for unemployed youth. He said that an investment of just 0.15% of GDP would create training programmes/job placement for 19 million young people and that an investment of 0.5% of GDP would create job growth of 1.2%.

Jennings said that positive action on growth would see a return of confidence which itself would potentially create millions of jobs.

“Business has the money – they are sitting on trillions in both the US and Europe. Here in Europe if the EU governments put up just 12 billion euro this could result in an extra 60 billion euro in investment a year. This in turn could result in two to three times that amount in private investment as confidence returns,” said Jennings.

He added, “There is an alternative. We cannot allow wealth to continue floating to the top 1%. Austerity is being used as an excuse to attack civil rights and the living wage which is having a negative effect on consumption.

Without a return to consumption and confidence we won’t get out of the crisis. We have to grow our way out of the crisis not continue down the dead end track of austerity.”

In an interview on the English language station World Radio Switzerland (WRS), Jennings said that there is now irrefutable evidence that Europe is buckling under the strain of the austerity measures with unemployment in the Eurozone hitting a record high of 10.09 percent.

Jennings told WRS listeners that, “It is time to change course. The EU should get the message that job creation is not the enemy of deficit reduction. This can be done. We need more cooperation around the jobs and growth strategy. If we devote just 1% of GMP of public investment social spending into jobs we can get 2.1 million people back into work now.”

Links to all stories are here:

Articles in French:



- Tribune de Genève

- L'Agéfi

- Le Liberté

- Le Temps

- Le Nouvelliste

- La Côte

- L’Hebdo

- Journal du Jura



French websites:



- Bluewin.ch

- Swissinfo.ch

- Romandie.com

- Arcinfo



Articles in German:



- Bieler Tagblatt

- Blick

- Der Bund

- Tages Anzeiger

- Der Landbote

- Südostschweiz

- Basler Zeitung

- SonnatgsZeitung

- Langenthaler Tagblatt

- Bote der Urschweiz

- Tages Woche

- Berner Zeitung



German websites:



- Cash.ch

- Wirtschaft.ch

- Swissinfo.ch

- Finanzen.ch

- Nachrichten.ch



Swiss Radios:



- WRS

- RSR (428 views)

- RFJ



Liechtenstein newspapers:



- Volksblatt

- Liechtensteiner Vaterland