> Leather artisans spend at least 15 hours making each Hermès bag by hand... which sells for €22,000... Hermès has said salaries for artisans begin ‘well above’ the French minimum wage...<p>OK, but how <i>much</i> above, given the €1,500/hour value they're generating? (I don't doubt there are costs of goods and marketing and retail and whatnot, but French minimum wage is a bit over €11/hour.)
Not sure I trust the salaries mentioned, it quotes Glassdoor when stating bank tellers have a salary of 14k which seems absurdly low, the first search on Glassdoor says 39k <a href="https://www.glassdoor.fr/Salaires/paris-bank-teller-salaire-SRCH_IL.0,5_IM1080_KO6,17.htm?clickSource=searchBtn" rel="nofollow">https://www.glassdoor.fr/Salaires/paris-bank-teller-salaire-...</a>
This article is piece of shit, seriously! That is not journalism but a paid advertisement in my opinion, going into great length to not be explicit but pretend workers are decently paid!<p><pre><code> By comparison a bank teller earns between €14,000 and €24,000 on average, according to employment website Glassdoor.
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This is completely crap, the minimum salary in France is 20500€ annually, and that gives 16236€ once employers taxes like social security and retirement have been deducted.<p>So a bank employee should have around at least 18/25k € at beginning once taxes are deducted.<p>But the important point is that the 22000$ bag will be manufactured mostly by a few days of work of 1 or 2 employees for the minimum salary, where LVMH boss will take so much margin that he is now the richest man on earth.<p>I don't understand how we can tolerate that. But at least there is no mystery why they have hard time to find skilled workers that want to enslave themselves for a misery salary .<p>As a reference, here is a more objective article of a few days ago about the real work conditions of the employees:<p><a href="https://www-mediapart-fr.translate.goog/journal/economie-et-social/070423/chanel-des-sacs-de-luxe-fabriques-dans-le-froid-le-silence-et-le-mepris?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=km&_x_tr_hl=fr&_x_tr_pto=wapp" rel="nofollow">https://www-mediapart-fr.translate.goog/journal/economie-et-...</a><p>Working in cold, no discussion allowed,...
Tangential to the topic: articles like this one often talk about “waiting lists” for luxury items like Hermes bags and Rolex watches. To be clear, there is no waiting list, or at least not the type that is counted down with wall clock time.<p>Your ability to buy the item is solely a function of spend on buying the less popular items. If you’re a big spender, sometimes the “rare” item magically appears the same day for purchase.