Key facts
Occupational workshops provide handicapped people with the opportunity of carrying out practical activities and at the same time benefiting from an income. In subsidising these workshops, the Confederation is seeking to reinforce disabled peoples’ integration into society and to reintegrate them into working life following the principle “reintegration rather than disability pension”. Assistance from the
Confederation comes in the form of investment subsidies (construction, expansion and renovation of the workshops) and operative subsidies to cover additional operating costs arising from employing handicapped people. The total amount of operative subsidies that the Federal Social insurance Office (FSIO) allocated in 1999 to 298 workshops amounted to CHF 317 million.