> without compensation.
Aren't the lower European salaries to be considered not compensating the worker?
Not when it's same by ratio, for example when someone in the US earns 100k a year for 50 weeks of 50 hours vs someone in EU earning 75.2k for 47 weeks of 40 hours.
And then we haven't even taken cost of living, lifetime healthcare costs, retirement benefits, and social security into account.
> Not when it's same by ratio
Of course, but if we consider ground truth, there's very few salaried workers in Europe making 75k unless they have political positions.
So if the American employer is cheating their workers out of 20% of their salary by making them work unpaid overtime. What should we say about the European employer who follows overtime rules to the book, but pays their workers 50% of what the American employer does?
> And then we haven't even taken cost of living...
Irrelevant. This is a transaction strictly between employer and employee. Reimbursement should be according to what the worker delivers to the company, and European workers are probably on about the same level of productivity as American.
Perhaps the European employer doesn't make as much profit? That could be due to higher taxes, higher cost of doing business, treating their employees better, etc.
But should the workers pay for that? American companies manage to combine higher profits and higher salaries – while still paying more for healthcare. As for "treating their employees better", there's no better way to treat them well than paying them more.