Business: The Global Scramble for Cheap Labor

WEST GERMANY'S Rollei-Werke for years has been losing sales to Japanese rivals, whose low wage costs enable them to sell cameras for less than half the price of a Rolleiflex. Fighting to overcome that handicap, Rollei executives recently decided to try to beat the Japanese at their own game. The German firm is investing $12.6 million in a new plant in Singapore. There workers will turn out cameras for sale in the U.S. and East Asia at wage rates only one-sixth as high as in Germany, and two-thirds below those prevailing even in Japanese...

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