6 ms·

I live in Germany, and I know many engineers who work for one of the big carmakers (either directly or through some external company). Most of them are under so

by s1rech 15y ago

I live in Germany, and I know many engineers who work for one of the big carmakers (either directly or through some external company). Most of them are under some form of collective bargaining agreement. They have a lot of nice perks, like paid overtime (in the form of days of) and pretty good salaries. Meanwhile I work as a developer for an internet company. I've never heard of anybody working under a CBA, or any kind of compensation for overtime (except for extreme cases, like working on sundays). I earn significantly less too. So I guess unions can be good sometimes, or something.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- vaksel 15y ago
  Germany has plenty of unions and Mercedes, BMW, Audi seem to be doing well enough You have two sides, with U.S. on one side where workers just work, with little thought for quality of life, and the other side is Europe, where they get paid a bit less, but they have 4 weeks vacation and much less demanding work load. I dunno about you, but I'd gladly sacrifice $10K(which is pretty much the whole difference between the two) to get all the perks that europeans get
  - afterburner 15y ago
    4 is the absolute minimum, and in most countries that minimum is 5. The average is more like 7 weeks.
    - vaksel 15y ago
      and in the states, you are lucky if you get 3...with 2 weeks being much more common...and that's the middle class jobs, the lower class ones, you are lucky to get a day of paid vacation
    - bryanlarsen 15y ago
      As far as I understand, Europeans count stat holidays, and Americans don't. A typical American gets 2 weeks of stat holidays on top of their 2 weeks of personal holidays, so that's almost the same as the European getting 4 weeks.
      - buro9 15y ago
        Erm, I've never received so little holiday, even when I worked low paid manual work. Currently I get 25 days per year not including 6 days stat, for 31 days total or just over 6 weeks total. This is considered average for London and the UK, I would consider 5 weeks to be the absolute low end in the UK. At the upper end in London the news about the Tube Drivers strike disclosed that they have 40+ days holiday, which is just over 8 weeks. When I lived in Sweden the numbers were higher, with it being compulsory to take a fortnight in a contiguous block in the summer. The UK is the worst of the lot, and we have it OK. Just my experience, but it varies so greatly from what you're quoting that I felt obliged to respond.
        objclxt 15y ago
        Indeed, continental Europe is a lot better than the UK. In the Netherlands holiday allowances can roll over for up to five years. My 30 days + public holidays is reasonable in the UK, and compared to the US (where I worked for four years, so have some comparison here) is heavenly.
        andrewingram 15y ago
        In the 3 jobs I've had in London as a web developer, I've never started with more than 20 days (excluding the statutory ones).
        jwblackwell 15y ago
        20-25 seems to be the norm in London. Unless you're a tube driver when you get 40, 35k and still complain. I can't wait for the day all trains are auto pilot.
      - _delirium 15y ago
        It depends on the country, but Denmark counts them separately: there are 12 official state holidays that you get off regardless, plus a minimum of 5 weeks of movable holidays (often 6, but 5 is mandatory), so 7 1/2 to 8 1/2 weeks total.
    - kalid 15y ago
      I was shocked when I looked at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_employment_leave_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_emplo... The US has 0 (zero!) mandated days off. Even China gives people 5-15 days minimum.
    - cubicle67 15y ago
      in Australia, we get 20 days holiday, 10 days public holiday and up to 10 days sick leave, so up to 40 paid days off per year. Holidays and sick days are cumulative too, and you're entitled to be paid for untaken ones when you leave your job, so log as you've worked there a minimum of 1 year
  - nostrademons 15y ago
    You can quit and take time between jobs. $10K should let you backpack around Europe for about 3-6 months, which is more of a perk than Europeans get. I'm not quite sure why more people don't do this. Bank a bunch of money at a nice professional job, then quit and be funemployed for 6-12 months while they do lots of cool, life-affirming things. A bunch of my friends have done it - either backpacking around the U.S, or buying a Eurail pass and traveling around Europe, or vacationing in Thailand, or helping orphans in Uganda, or joining the Peace Corps - and have said it's one of the best things they ever did. It doesn't even take much money - most of these are liberal arts majors, not computer programmers, and make much closer to $50K/year than $100K/year.
    - _delirium 15y ago
      For a few months that's possible, but at 12 months it starts getting tricky if you ever want a job again. May be less of a problem in tech, but in a lot of areas if you're "long-term unemployed", HR just screens out your resume; companies seem to only want to hire employed or recently-employed people (cf. http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/tribu/ct-biz-0905-work-advice-huppke-20110904,0,6878981.column http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/tribu/ct-biz-0905-wor...).
      - nostrademons 15y ago
        Start a blog about your experiences and then call yourself a self-employed travel blogger. Might even make a little AdSense cash off of it too. There are all sorts of creative ways to get around HR.
        georgieporgie 15y ago
        HR isn't going to read your blog, and HR is, sadly, the gateway to (just a guess here) 90% of job opportunities. If you have an 'in' at the company, you can bypass HR's initial gating, and your plan will work, otherwise it's unlikely.
        nostrademons 15y ago
  - temphn 15y ago
    That European social model is about to go bankrupt. (The American one soon thereafter, though not for lack of hard work.)
    - maigret 15y ago
      But not the German one. Actually it's one of the best working system in the world nowadays. And if you look at other well performing countries in Europe - Scandinavia, Switzerland, they are nowhere working like crazy. Holland has quite a sustainable pension system. I think you are over-generalizing. Sure, some countries are in deep shit, but that's not the social model that's in cause, rather a lack of accounting, lower business moral, lower education level, etc. There are also non social states going bankrupt. I think you miss the point, this move from VW is actually acknowledging that taking time off is a step toward more productivity. I also think that having time for family, culture and further education on non related topics is the best way to make you a round person and thus someone who will be highly efficient in its job life. If that's how you would define Europe, it hasn't worked that bad... I mean, there have been centuries some people are saying the demise of Europe, but it's still one of the richest big area in the world. Europe has gone through so much more worse crisis than the debt crisis, it will take its game together and solve it.
    - rmc 15y ago
      Not really. The strong economies of Europe (France & Germany), the ones that are bailing out the other countries, have the highest number of employee rights and annual days holidays. It's the examples of neoliberal 'light touch' countries (like Ireland) that need bail outs.
  - mjwalshe 15y ago
    When you consider that in the UK NI is 11/12% and that covers the NHS and your state pension plus SERPS (second state pension) and unemployment benefits. I knew a guy who emigrated to the USA and was working for CITI and was paying a bigger % of his pay just for his health cover.
    - ig1 15y ago
      The NHS is incredibly efficient in terms of ROI, the cost per person of the NHS is less than the cost of overhead admin work for healthcare in the US.
    - timthorn 15y ago
      NI isn't hypothecated - the money the government collects through NI is thrown into the pot with almost all other taxes. NHS & pension payments come out of general taxation.
    - smiler 15y ago
      You do know employer and employee both pay NI, so total NI is around 24%
      - rossriley 15y ago
        The employer contribution is only around 1%.
        smiler 15y ago
        Where on earth do you get this idea? Please see this link http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/paye/rates-thresholds.htm http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/paye/rates-thresholds.htm It is 13.8% for employers!
      - mjwalshe 15y ago
        so its not coming out of my pay and companies don't have the expense of running their own health systems and they dont need to employ extra HR people to administer them. It also means that startups don't have to compete against big companies that can afford health benefits which act to lock employees into big companies
  - RShackleford 15y ago
    We have only two week vacation at Turkey, fuck :(
heydenberk 15y ago
"extreme cases, like working on sundays" Oh, Germany.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- mjwalshe 15y ago
  Lol though anyone who called themselves an engineer would be on a non fixed hours contract any how - its part of the whole profession vs the grunts on the production line. And I bet the demarcation lines in engineering grades are enforced rigidly in Germany.
- LearnYouALisp 15y ago
  Did you know most stores close at 8PM on weekdays?
  - hammock 15y ago
    Is that supposed to be different from the states, where many retail stores close sometime between 7-9pm?
    - cookiecaper 15y ago
      If you're a mom and pop or speciality shop you may close between 7 and 9 (usually closer to 9), but most of the regional or national "stores" close between 10pm and 12am. Grocery stores are even better, generally either closing at 12am or not closing at all. Wal-Mart, for instance, is mostly 24 hours, and Wal-Mart is very widespread.
      - LearnYouALisp 15y ago
        H-E-B (mainly in central and south Texas) has similar hours at some of its locations.
      - duck 15y ago
        It really depends where you live. In Maine, all grocery stores that I know of close no later than 9pm. I really think that is better too, especially since a lot of the employees are high school kids.
eigenvector 15y ago
I'm a Canadian that has worked in a few large, unionized public or quasi-public workplaces as an engineer. In general hours of work, benefits (extended medical / dental) and vacation / sick leave will be better than in non-union private sector workplaces. Salaries tend to higher at the entry-level and comparable at the high end. However, I have always found employee satisfaction and employee-management relations to be far worse in the large union workplaces. I believe it is due to the fact that having a big, strong union that is capable of basically strong-arming the employer through the threat of job action (if you operate a nuclear power plant, having your engineers go on strike is not really an option) forces management to concede benefits they don't truly believe employees deserve, and that leads to clawbacks of, well, pretty much everything that isn't in the collective agreement. So you might get your 18 sick days (which you can never use without lying because no one who is not chronically ill gets sick for 18 working days every year), but you might have to fill out a multi-page form to get a new notebook (a paper notebook not a notebook computer). Look at the sort of treatment that contract or temp employees get in big unionized workplaces - generally awful, and that reflects the company's true attitude toward it's employees. I'd much rather work in a non-union workplace where I get benefits above the statutory minimums because the company truly values it's employees and understands that people who are treated well are more productive than one where everything I get was a concession to avoid labour strife. If non-unionized company X gives 3 weeks paid vacation per year (2 weeks is the mandatory minimum in Canada) because they want to, that's much more likely to translate into a great workplace than the 4 weeks company Y gives because their employees are members of a massive national labour union and demand it. Just my $0.02 from personal experience.
- Daishiman 15y ago
  | I'd much rather work in a non-union workplace where I get benefits above the statutory minimums because the company truly values it's employees and understands that people who are treated well are more productive than one where everything I get was a concession to avoid labour strife. Agreed, but do take notice that most people, in most industries, generally don't have that choice
  - eigenvector 15y ago
mahyarm 15y ago
How are wages in europe for engineers and developers? I look at wages in Europe compared to the USA, and even though we work a lot more, developers do get paid far more too, especially when you compare on a cost of living and taxation basis.
- GuiA 15y ago
  If you bring it down to numbers, the pay is definitely higher in the US. For instance, an average software engineer out of school can expect a starting salary between 25 and 35k euros on average in France. In SF, it's more $70-90k at the very least. But then you have to account for the higher cost of living, transportation (even if you don't drive, French employers pay for a part of your public transportation tickets), and all the other perks that are inherent to your job (insurance, subsidized lunches,...) and inherent to the country (better public education, etc.). So I think it's hard to say empirically that engineers are better off in one country rather than the other- although I'd be tempted to say that very high end engineers are better off in the US rather than Europe, and the average engineer is better off in Europe rather than the US.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    You have it backwards - the cost of living is considerably higher in France than in the US. What costs $1 in the US costs $1.20 in France [1]. ...better public education... Um, no. Better students, but a considerably worse public education system. http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou... The cheese, however, is considerably better in France, as are the women (fatties over here drag our average down). [1] Since I'm too lazy to switch to windows and open up the Penn Table in Excel, I backed the numbers out of GDP tables: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin... [edit: Hi downmodders, sorry for providing facts. I'll try to avoid that in the future.]
    - 15y ago
iwwr 15y ago
The comparison should not be made between people who can be workers both under a union or outside of it, but rather between them and people who would be barred from employment altogether (at least in those specific instances).

by s1rech 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

vaksel 15y ago
Germany has plenty of unions and Mercedes, BMW, Audi seem to be doing well enough You have two sides, with U.S. on one side where workers just work, with little thought for quality of life, and the other side is Europe, where they get paid a bit less, but they have 4 weeks vacation and much less demanding work load. I dunno about you, but I'd gladly sacrifice $10K(which is pretty much the whole difference between the two) to get all the perks that europeans get
- afterburner 15y ago
  4 is the absolute minimum, and in most countries that minimum is 5. The average is more like 7 weeks.
  - vaksel 15y ago
    and in the states, you are lucky if you get 3...with 2 weeks being much more common...and that's the middle class jobs, the lower class ones, you are lucky to get a day of paid vacation
  - bryanlarsen 15y ago
    As far as I understand, Europeans count stat holidays, and Americans don't. A typical American gets 2 weeks of stat holidays on top of their 2 weeks of personal holidays, so that's almost the same as the European getting 4 weeks.
    - buro9 15y ago
      Erm, I've never received so little holiday, even when I worked low paid manual work. Currently I get 25 days per year not including 6 days stat, for 31 days total or just over 6 weeks total. This is considered average for London and the UK, I would consider 5 weeks to be the absolute low end in the UK. At the upper end in London the news about the Tube Drivers strike disclosed that they have 40+ days holiday, which is just over 8 weeks. When I lived in Sweden the numbers were higher, with it being compulsory to take a fortnight in a contiguous block in the summer. The UK is the worst of the lot, and we have it OK. Just my experience, but it varies so greatly from what you're quoting that I felt obliged to respond.
      - objclxt 15y ago
        Indeed, continental Europe is a lot better than the UK. In the Netherlands holiday allowances can roll over for up to five years. My 30 days + public holidays is reasonable in the UK, and compared to the US (where I worked for four years, so have some comparison here) is heavenly.
      - andrewingram 15y ago
        In the 3 jobs I've had in London as a web developer, I've never started with more than 20 days (excluding the statutory ones).
      - jwblackwell 15y ago
        20-25 seems to be the norm in London. Unless you're a tube driver when you get 40, 35k and still complain. I can't wait for the day all trains are auto pilot.
    - _delirium 15y ago
      It depends on the country, but Denmark counts them separately: there are 12 official state holidays that you get off regardless, plus a minimum of 5 weeks of movable holidays (often 6, but 5 is mandatory), so 7 1/2 to 8 1/2 weeks total.
  - kalid 15y ago
    I was shocked when I looked at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_employment_leave_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_emplo... The US has 0 (zero!) mandated days off. Even China gives people 5-15 days minimum.
  - cubicle67 15y ago
    in Australia, we get 20 days holiday, 10 days public holiday and up to 10 days sick leave, so up to 40 paid days off per year. Holidays and sick days are cumulative too, and you're entitled to be paid for untaken ones when you leave your job, so log as you've worked there a minimum of 1 year
- nostrademons 15y ago
  You can quit and take time between jobs. $10K should let you backpack around Europe for about 3-6 months, which is more of a perk than Europeans get. I'm not quite sure why more people don't do this. Bank a bunch of money at a nice professional job, then quit and be funemployed for 6-12 months while they do lots of cool, life-affirming things. A bunch of my friends have done it - either backpacking around the U.S, or buying a Eurail pass and traveling around Europe, or vacationing in Thailand, or helping orphans in Uganda, or joining the Peace Corps - and have said it's one of the best things they ever did. It doesn't even take much money - most of these are liberal arts majors, not computer programmers, and make much closer to $50K/year than $100K/year.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    For a few months that's possible, but at 12 months it starts getting tricky if you ever want a job again. May be less of a problem in tech, but in a lot of areas if you're "long-term unemployed", HR just screens out your resume; companies seem to only want to hire employed or recently-employed people (cf. http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/tribu/ct-biz-0905-work-advice-huppke-20110904,0,6878981.column http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/tribu/ct-biz-0905-wor...).
    - nostrademons 15y ago
      Start a blog about your experiences and then call yourself a self-employed travel blogger. Might even make a little AdSense cash off of it too. There are all sorts of creative ways to get around HR.
      - georgieporgie 15y ago
        HR isn't going to read your blog, and HR is, sadly, the gateway to (just a guess here) 90% of job opportunities. If you have an 'in' at the company, you can bypass HR's initial gating, and your plan will work, otherwise it's unlikely.
        nostrademons 15y ago
- temphn 15y ago
  That European social model is about to go bankrupt. (The American one soon thereafter, though not for lack of hard work.)
  - maigret 15y ago
    But not the German one. Actually it's one of the best working system in the world nowadays. And if you look at other well performing countries in Europe - Scandinavia, Switzerland, they are nowhere working like crazy. Holland has quite a sustainable pension system. I think you are over-generalizing. Sure, some countries are in deep shit, but that's not the social model that's in cause, rather a lack of accounting, lower business moral, lower education level, etc. There are also non social states going bankrupt. I think you miss the point, this move from VW is actually acknowledging that taking time off is a step toward more productivity. I also think that having time for family, culture and further education on non related topics is the best way to make you a round person and thus someone who will be highly efficient in its job life. If that's how you would define Europe, it hasn't worked that bad... I mean, there have been centuries some people are saying the demise of Europe, but it's still one of the richest big area in the world. Europe has gone through so much more worse crisis than the debt crisis, it will take its game together and solve it.
  - rmc 15y ago
    Not really. The strong economies of Europe (France & Germany), the ones that are bailing out the other countries, have the highest number of employee rights and annual days holidays. It's the examples of neoliberal 'light touch' countries (like Ireland) that need bail outs.
- mjwalshe 15y ago
  When you consider that in the UK NI is 11/12% and that covers the NHS and your state pension plus SERPS (second state pension) and unemployment benefits. I knew a guy who emigrated to the USA and was working for CITI and was paying a bigger % of his pay just for his health cover.
  - ig1 15y ago
    The NHS is incredibly efficient in terms of ROI, the cost per person of the NHS is less than the cost of overhead admin work for healthcare in the US.
  - timthorn 15y ago
    NI isn't hypothecated - the money the government collects through NI is thrown into the pot with almost all other taxes. NHS & pension payments come out of general taxation.
  - smiler 15y ago
    You do know employer and employee both pay NI, so total NI is around 24%
    - rossriley 15y ago
      The employer contribution is only around 1%.
      - smiler 15y ago
        Where on earth do you get this idea? Please see this link http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/paye/rates-thresholds.htm http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/paye/rates-thresholds.htm It is 13.8% for employers!
    - mjwalshe 15y ago
      so its not coming out of my pay and companies don't have the expense of running their own health systems and they dont need to employ extra HR people to administer them. It also means that startups don't have to compete against big companies that can afford health benefits which act to lock employees into big companies
- RShackleford 15y ago
  We have only two week vacation at Turkey, fuck :(

heydenberk 15y ago

"extreme cases, like working on sundays" Oh, Germany.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
mjwalshe 15y ago
Lol though anyone who called themselves an engineer would be on a non fixed hours contract any how - its part of the whole profession vs the grunts on the production line. And I bet the demarcation lines in engineering grades are enforced rigidly in Germany.
LearnYouALisp 15y ago
Did you know most stores close at 8PM on weekdays?
- hammock 15y ago
  Is that supposed to be different from the states, where many retail stores close sometime between 7-9pm?
  - cookiecaper 15y ago
    If you're a mom and pop or speciality shop you may close between 7 and 9 (usually closer to 9), but most of the regional or national "stores" close between 10pm and 12am. Grocery stores are even better, generally either closing at 12am or not closing at all. Wal-Mart, for instance, is mostly 24 hours, and Wal-Mart is very widespread.
    - LearnYouALisp 15y ago
      H-E-B (mainly in central and south Texas) has similar hours at some of its locations.
    - duck 15y ago
      It really depends where you live. In Maine, all grocery stores that I know of close no later than 9pm. I really think that is better too, especially since a lot of the employees are high school kids.

eigenvector 15y ago

I'm a Canadian that has worked in a few large, unionized public or quasi-public workplaces as an engineer. In general hours of work, benefits (extended medical / dental) and vacation / sick leave will be better than in non-union private sector workplaces. Salaries tend to higher at the entry-level and comparable at the high end. However, I have always found employee satisfaction and employee-management relations to be far worse in the large union workplaces. I believe it is due to the fact that having a big, strong union that is capable of basically strong-arming the employer through the threat of job action (if you operate a nuclear power plant, having your engineers go on strike is not really an option) forces management to concede benefits they don't truly believe employees deserve, and that leads to clawbacks of, well, pretty much everything that isn't in the collective agreement. So you might get your 18 sick days (which you can never use without lying because no one who is not chronically ill gets sick for 18 working days every year), but you might have to fill out a multi-page form to get a new notebook (a paper notebook not a notebook computer). Look at the sort of treatment that contract or temp employees get in big unionized workplaces - generally awful, and that reflects the company's true attitude toward it's employees. I'd much rather work in a non-union workplace where I get benefits above the statutory minimums because the company truly values it's employees and understands that people who are treated well are more productive than one where everything I get was a concession to avoid labour strife. If non-unionized company X gives 3 weeks paid vacation per year (2 weeks is the mandatory minimum in Canada) because they want to, that's much more likely to translate into a great workplace than the 4 weeks company Y gives because their employees are members of a massive national labour union and demand it. Just my $0.02 from personal experience.

Daishiman 15y ago
| I'd much rather work in a non-union workplace where I get benefits above the statutory minimums because the company truly values it's employees and understands that people who are treated well are more productive than one where everything I get was a concession to avoid labour strife. Agreed, but do take notice that most people, in most industries, generally don't have that choice
- eigenvector 15y ago

mahyarm 15y ago

How are wages in europe for engineers and developers? I look at wages in Europe compared to the USA, and even though we work a lot more, developers do get paid far more too, especially when you compare on a cost of living and taxation basis.

GuiA 15y ago
If you bring it down to numbers, the pay is definitely higher in the US. For instance, an average software engineer out of school can expect a starting salary between 25 and 35k euros on average in France. In SF, it's more $70-90k at the very least. But then you have to account for the higher cost of living, transportation (even if you don't drive, French employers pay for a part of your public transportation tickets), and all the other perks that are inherent to your job (insurance, subsidized lunches,...) and inherent to the country (better public education, etc.). So I think it's hard to say empirically that engineers are better off in one country rather than the other- although I'd be tempted to say that very high end engineers are better off in the US rather than Europe, and the average engineer is better off in Europe rather than the US.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  You have it backwards - the cost of living is considerably higher in France than in the US. What costs $1 in the US costs $1.20 in France [1]. ...better public education... Um, no. Better students, but a considerably worse public education system. http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou... The cheese, however, is considerably better in France, as are the women (fatties over here drag our average down). [1] Since I'm too lazy to switch to windows and open up the Penn Table in Excel, I backed the numbers out of GDP tables: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin... [edit: Hi downmodders, sorry for providing facts. I'll try to avoid that in the future.]
  - 15y ago

iwwr 15y ago

The comparison should not be made between people who can be workers both under a union or outside of it, but rather between them and people who would be barred from employment altogether (at least in those specific instances).