Been working in Europe for about 10 years now with "low" wages as a Hardware Engineer (6 figures US). Sorry but America seems like a third world country compared with what we get here. I have: 35 days vacation per year, 35 hour work week, overtime pay, free education, childcare money each month, healthcare that wont bankrupt me if I lose my job, up to 3 years in parental leave (6 mo. paid), probably other things which I'm forgetting. No amount of money would make me go back to that dumpster fire that is America.
I work at a unionised company, our union is called IG Metall. You can google the EG (entgelt) levels - engineers range from EG14-17 + an additional % each month (depending on your productivity range from 10-25% of brutto on top) + we get 14 salaries instead of 12 (roughly - union agreement). https://www.igmetall.de/download/docs_MuE_ERA_Entgelte_Juni2...
I always was confused when somebody told me exactly like you did. These levels are inconsistent across different lands. How much brutto is that practically? My calculations are 75-90k, but this is a huge spread :)
Anyways thanks for the insight!
