Lesen Sie diesen Artikel in der deutschen Originalfassung Prologue: Background on working conditions Unpaid contractual overtime. Low entry-level salaries. Lots of responsibility. Stress. Four years ago, emotions ran high when the “Architektur Basel” editorial team discussed these subjects. Some said the situation was being dramatised, while others claimed conditions were unacceptable. One thing was clear: Creating architecture can be inefficient, but workloads verging on self-exploitation are problematic. To find out what the facts were, “Architektur Basel” conducted an anonymous online survey in December 2022. The 446 responses, which came primarily from Basel, were unsettling. The majority of employees earn a gross salary of just 5,000 to 6,000 Swiss francs a month. Salaries in excess of 7,000 francs – the starting salary for primary school teachers – are an exception. Moreover, only a small minority are paid a 13th month’s salary. Contractual overtime and high workloads are a constant issue, and mere lip service is paid to work-life balance. The result is unsustainable, unhealthy levels of stress. The union The shortcomings of our profession were made clear to us while we were still students. During our introductory session, the course directors told us we had chosen the worst paid graduate-level profession, and if we had problems with working a 60-hour week, we were in the wrong place. When asked about unions and collective employment contracts (CECs), trade union representatives explained that neither existed in the architecture sector. But isn’t the time to talk about setting up a union long past anyway, now that more than a century has passed since the general strike of 1918, which resulted in the introduction of the 48-hour week and a raft of CECs in many sectors? And is a union even right for our profession? Architects quite often see themselves as lone ...