[Leica] Thoughts on the new Zeiss lenses/So expensive?

[patrick at photo.net (Patrick (Washington, DC))]

employers fees is about 40% on top of the gross salary to each employee in 
Europe. Add 6 weeks of
paid vacation. Various safety net and fringies (I have a friend's wife who 
recently left a
marketing job at a European company (not too senior or anything) and got 16 
months (!) of salary.

I don't know much about Japanese cost-of-production, but I have a hard time 
believe that it is on
par with Europe. 

Lastly, add negotiations with the Unions before you are allowed to make any 
changes in the company
direction or anything that can/will effect the employees.

Patrick
Washington, DC
- born and raised in Sweden.


--- Douglas Sharp <douglas.sharp@gmx.de> wrote:
> 
> 
> 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
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>