They absolutely are. After years of making poor decisions that has damaged the company and its employees, Zeiss has now brought in a hatchet man... He has decided that any mature/qualified people should be replaced with 30 something "photo copier" sales men. Its a shame that a company that has such an astounding reputation in so many areas has made so many poor decisions including who should be running their US operations. Their market share in the US has tanked and it is solely due to the poor upper management decisions to close finishing labs in the US. I believe there are several employee law suits pending and more to follow.