Posted on 01/20/2008 12:45:50 AM PST by bruinbirdman
Public exhorted to avoid buying Nokia handsets in the wake of Bochum closure decision.
Mobile phone manufacturer Nokia is running into heavy weather in Germany, as a veritable national movement is beginning to rise against the decision earlier this week to close the Nokia handset assembly plant in Bochum on the Ruhr.
An anti-Nokia campaign is being put together with considerable alacrity.
The decision to shut down the plant and move production to Romania threatens directly to put more than 2,000 people out of work, with a further two thousand jobs in jeopardy as an indirect result of the closure.
On Wednesday, Social Democrats in Nordrhein-Westfalen had already got an online capaign up and running under the slogan "No Nokia, so nicht!"
By Thursday afternoon the site had received more than a thousand names and comments, often expressing the view that this was a last straw and the writer would no longer be buying Nokia products, as a protest against the maximisation of the company’s profits.
Polticians are also demanding action. According to the Social Democrat group within the German Parliament, Nokia "needs to feel the heat and realise that its behaviour is unacceptable".
The Germans have been particularly aggrieved and astonished at the company’s actions, given that the Bochum facility has not been operating at a loss.
"I could understand the decision if we had been running on minus", said Gabriele Presinger, a worker at the handset plant, speaking on Thursday evening.
On Thursday dozens of Nokia employees gathered at the factory gates in the evening to protest the move.
There were mutterings about betrayal, since only at the end of last year the employer had provided the staff with incentive bonuses for a job well done, despite the fact that - at least in the view of the workers - the decision to shut down the factory and move production elsewhere had already been made by this stage.
Many angry members of staff also pointed to the heavy overtime routines that were in effect either side of the New Year, seeing this as a means for the employer to compensate for possible downtime from protest strikes brought on by the decision to shut the assembly plant.
The German federal government and the government of Nordrhein-Westfalen have jointly demanded that the Nokia management come to the negotiating table to discuss alternatives to the closure of the Bochum facility.
Nokia’s SVP, Communications Arja Suominen reported to the Associated Press news agency on Thursday that the company is ready for discussions, but the decision itself is not for changing.
The plan to cease production in Bochum was based on the facts and had been agreed after "very careful consideration", said Suominen.
Workers in Bochum and union activists are planning a major demonstration in support of their case for next Tuesday. Earlier this week, Veli Sundbäck, Executive Vice President of Nokia and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Nokia GmbH had stated that owing to market changes and increasing requirements for cost-effectiveness, the production of mobile devices in Germany is no longer feasible for Nokia.
A further problem for the manufacturer, aside from higher personnel costs than would be found in Romania, is that subcontractors, whose proximity is important for a Nokia factory, have themselves been reluctant to come to Germany because of the high costs.
I won’t buy a Nokia phones either.
‘Closing one plant in Deutschland brings the boot of the state on your neck.”
more like closing the last plant brings....
everything I have read about this is not barn door after horse come home, its barn door after farm sold as a parking lot.
Why bother? It is futile symbolism at best.
These people flunked common sense 101...
LLS
I go back to the earliest days of cellular (field engineer) I can tell you with absolute certainty that Nokia phones are and always have been real POS. Every one I've ever been around, and I mean dozens of different models going all the way back to the clunky bag phones. Each exhibited the worst receive sensitivity of any phones out there. Oh, and don't ever drop one. It won't be working when you pick it up.
I once saw a Motorola phone dropped from 490' off a tower. It hit in the gravel right next to me at the base of the tower where we were testing that day. The phone not only did not break, but it didn't even drop the call......
The president of the company is a hater of the United States. I will never buy other phone from that company.
Why does that not surprise me? I get the same feeling about the guy that I know that works in corporate. I think he hates us too. I own Moto here.
LLS
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