Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/04/15
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]All of the facts below are true for some European countries but not others. For example, in Denmark there are very few additional social costs--many employers of course offer fringe benefits such as private pensions, but so do employers in, say the US and I am sure Japan as well. In the Netherlands the social costs add much less than 40% to the salary. The best countries to get laid off are probably Belgium and Germany. Spain is also pretty generous. But it is true that it is expensive to manufacture things in Western Europe, Japan or (parts of) North America. That is a reflection of the high standard of living in those countries (remember that the employer's costs are someone's wages). Nonetheless, some companies manage to do it profitably and well, others don't. More specifically, some German companies are doing well. Leica is not. I think the problems at Leica are much less related to the high cost of doing business and much more to the poor strategic decisions taken by successive management teams during the past decade or so. Nathan Patrick (Washington, DC) wrote: > 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 >> > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information > > -- Nathan Wajsman Almere, The Netherlands General photography: http://www.nathanfoto.com Seville photography: http://www.fotosevilla.com Stock photography: http://www.alamy.com/search-results.asp?qt=wajsman http://myloupe.com/home/found_photographer.php?photographer=507 Prints for sale: http://www.photodeluge.com