Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/04/15
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Scott McLoughlin wrote: > I continue to wonder - Japanese worker pay scales are comparable > to German pay scales. So why are all the lenses made in Germany > *so* much more than pricey than premo Japanese lenses, incl. > CV lenses. > Hello from Germany, what the workers get in their paypackets may be approximately comparable. The expensive part, for the EMPLOYER, are the additional costs, sometimes called the second salary. These have to be paid to cover, at least in part,various aspects of social security, pensions, health insurance (the employer pays 50% of the HI), accident insurance, invalidity etc etc etc. for each employee. These costs are , of course passed on to the customer. This is one of the factors currently strangling the German economy. In some cases, see e.g. Leica, it is even too expensive to consider making members of staff redundant due to the immense costs of the "social safety net" intended to sweeten inevitable unemployment. As an example: the German branch of a global company based in the US, closed their German offices, employees with 20-30years in the company were entitled per agreement to 6 months notice and around 75,000 euros golden handshake each!! At the same time a British employee 30 years with the same company in the UK had to leave within the month and got about 1000 GBP. The UK case would have been different if the company had made 100 or more employees redundant. I'm not too sure that it was (I quote the management) "pure coincidence" that "only" 99 people were asked to leave. Strange, a few months later it was 99 again. A little political, but I think it shows why German products are more expensive. cheers Douglas