However, consider this.
On average a B-Permit holder has just arrived in CH. This means this is their first job here. Of course there are plenty of high level expats that fall in this category... but the Swiss job market has its own rules and coming in the market from outside is harder than move within.
A C-Permit holder has been here at least five year up to 10, 20 or more. They had chances to change roles, they know the swiss market and they can negotiate their salary better.
Same goes for a naturalised foreigner. They have been here at least 12-13 years.
Perhaps your confusion and the illusion of more money comes from a B permit holder having to pay withholding tax and a C permit holder not, so they would get out 'more' money at the end of the month. But taxes are taxes, you still have to pay them whether you have withholding tax or not.
So will people start to negotiate a better salary with their boss after changing to C-permit?
The answer is no.
This doesn’t mean the C’s pay no, or less, taxes they just pay it directly.
For an example, non-manager working in finance in Zurich - C is about 400CHF/month higher than B. For teachers, it is over 700CHF/month.
I work for a large company and do a lot of the recruiting, we have set bands for specific levels and where you sit in this band depends on qualifications, experience etc. but never once have I seen a person go into a lower scale on the salary band based on a permit type.
As indicated above the longer you spend in a place the more opportunities/ connections you're exposed to.
It's only logical that you end up earning more and that the stats reflect that.
It doesn't mean however a company will make a different salary offer according to your B/ C permit.
It's more or less like renting flats: the first ones are - under normal circumstances - worse than the next ones once you're properly settled in the country/ town.
Gender politics apart, please consider : C-holder are on average at least 5 years older than B-holder. With age, salary increases (especially for job partially related to the public sector, like teachers) Under the category B-holder there are quite some hired from abroad, with permit linked to their actual job, so small negotiation power there
So the difference may reside in the population, rather than in the permit type. A bit like "statistically more criminals are foreigns", yes, sure, for many countries it is a statistically sound affirmation, however try to check "statistically more poor people commit crimes" and "statistically more foreign people are poor" and it takes a different spin (disclaimer: I do not condone crime, apart from international corporate tax elusion funding a decent system of public transport here in Switzerland )
There's a significant larger amount of B-holders versus C-holders in their twenties while the tendence reverses after the age of 30/ 35 years.
If we compared salary by just using permit then we'd arrive to the conclusion that C-holders earn more but it's actually all about age/ experience rather than permit .
You can play with the data using this link:
While one may see differences when filtering for permit status, one cannot assume that permit status causes the difference.
A rather more likely explanation, as other posters have pointed out, is that because permit status generally correlates to longer time spent in Switzerland, someone holding a C permit likely has a better understanding of the Swiss market, of Swiss negotiation practices, has developed better Swiss networking skills, and other Swiss-specific soft skills that could add value.
It's the combination of those factors that more likely result in ability to negotiate higher salaries.
So should a person negotiate for higher salary after changing from B permit to C permit? Causality is not important here, the key is whether people can use C permit as a good argument to ask for better salary from his boss. Assuming nobody did this, then B permit should have similar salary as C permit because they only changed a card to a paper (now C permit is also a card of course), unless they moved to other employer offering better salary... But in the link in my last post the difference in month salary between B and C is only about 400 CHF which is about 5000 CHF per year, such a little difference is not convincing for me to change employer....
BTW, people usually hold B permit for 5 or 10 years before changing to C. So many B permit person especially those with more than 5 years working experience should have similar networking skills etc .. Have you ever tried salarium? In that system all the variables are the same but only different permits are different but salary is different.
If you there is a correlation you need to find and prove the mechanism by which a B permit produces a lower salary. Finding the correlation isn't sufficient.
No. You'll be laughed out of the managers office.
The apparent higher pay of C permit holders to B permit holders is not because C permit holders get a pay rise on acquisition.
Hey, even if coming from outside the EU they may even have access to unemployment money, without risking becoming illegal during the three months of "frist".
This means that C holder have way more power, but not directly with the current employer.
On the other hand, if you were a woman, and you would transgender to being a man ...
Please note I said permit correlates to the salary in my previous post....As a person holds some degree in statistics and working in this field for a while in this country, I am happy to see more and more people are clear about correlation and causality....Maybe you would also like to know more about association, correlation and causality? I can recommend this paper: Altman, N., Krzywinski, M. Association, correlation and causation. Nature Methods 12, 899–900 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.3587
I cannot prove C permit can cause better salary, but would like to think potential links between them. As I said, for me the 400 CHF difference between B and C in salarium is unlikely to be explained by just changing employer...