ZURICH (Reuters), The Swiss Trade Union Federation (SGB), decided Friday to start a campaign to have a referendum about tapping into the Swiss National Bank cash pile in order to support the nation’s pension system.

Due to its extraordinarily high profit margins and the low interest rate, SNB’s distribution capacity has increased sharply. The SGB declared that this money belonged to the people after delegates approved the campaign as reported by Reuters.

Over the course of the long-running central bank campaign to limit the Swiss safe-haven Swiss Franc, more than 100 billion Swiss Swiss Francs ($108 Billion) has been earned by the SNB.

As people age and investment returns shrink, pension funds all over the globe are in crisis.

SGB is confident it will gather 100,000 signatures in order to start a “popular initiatives” referendum, which would be subject to direct democracy under Swiss law. Then, the SGB could win the nationwide vote. This may happen, most likely by 2025.

Bern’s government would have to accept the results.

SNB refused to comment on this political initiative.

It is expected to resist any payment to pension funds. This comes after it has rejected requests for the balance sheet to become a sovereign wealth fund. This would jeopardize its independence, it says.

SGB claimed it had chosen an initiative text which would continue to ensure independence in SNB’s monetary policy. Although the initiative requires adjustments in distributions, it does not seek to restructure payouts and restrict SNB’s investments.

Only high reserves would allow the SNB to distribute profits to the pension funds. The entire income from negative rates of interest would also be transferred on an unrestricted basis to the pension fund.

Pensions, which cover everyone who worked in Switzerland, are expected to fall into debt by 2025. They will also reach an annual deficit 5 billion Swiss francs (by 2032).

In the meantime, huge profits have been made by the SNB from bonds and shares it bought using foreign currency purchases to devalue the Franc.

For 2021, the central bank anticipates making a profit in excess of 26 billion Francs. According to data from the central bank, the SNB’s net profit is 108 billion Francs.

($1 = 0.9259 Swiss francs)