"Life should be more than just working to make ends meet at the end of the month," says May Day speaker

As is usual on the occasion of 1 May, the Canton of Zug Trades Union Association invited a number of speakers to give a speech on Landsgemeindeplatz.

This year the speakers included Jerome Peter of the SP party, Julia Küng of the Young Alternatives, Sofia Zouhir of the Women’s Strike Association, and Andreas cantonal parliamentarian Lustenberger.

The first speaker was Peter, who has been a member of the greater city council of Zug since last year. “What needs to happen is a change in attitudes,” he said, by which he meant that there was more to life than continually striving for continual economic growth.

He did not think it was right that employees should get out of bed every day just to do a job to be able to make ends meet at the end of the month. “Life should be about more than this; it should mean having time for oneself, voluntary work, art and culture, getting involved in local societies and looking after (one’s own) children. Indeed, as he thus spake, some of those in the gathered assembly nodded in agreement.

In her speech, Julia Küng, a pupil at the Zug Cantonal School, felt that “More to Life”, the general theme of the day, meant more than equal opportunities for men and women and higher wages. The 18-year-old is a member of the organising committee behind the Friday afternoon pupil demonstrations calling for more to be done to protect the environment. “The reason why so little is being done on this front is because those people in a position to decide things are not showing enough responsibility. They do not seem to realise how urgent the problems relating to the environment are,” she said, with the journalist who wrote this article, Vanessa Varisco, noticing how one could tell how strongly Küng felt about this by the way she spoke. Not only does she want to talk about such matters, she wants things to change. “It is the people who work in large companies, politicians and banks who are lining their pockets at the expense of the environment and future generations,” she insisted. “Those of us behind this youth environment movement are driven by deep-rooted concern, and anger, too,” she concluded.

Lustenberger, who is also the leader of the Alternative Green Party in the canton of Zug, agreed that more must be done to help the environment, the changes relating to energy needing to be implemented.

Not that the event on this delightfully sunny day was all serious talk and complaint, there was musical entertainment provided by the1 May Choir and a performance by local musician Troubadueli on the guitar and harmonica, with texts including humorous jibes at modern society, causing many of those gathered to smile.