Nokia Wants Closure
January 22, 2008
Plant workers and German labor groups have been furious about mobile-phone manufacturer Nokia's decision to shut down the plant in the western German city of Bochum and move most of the operation to Romania, where labor costs are significantly lower.
On Monday, Nokia's chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, representatives of the Bochum plant and the IG Metall trade union met in Helsinki for what was called a "preliminary contact" by company spokeswoman Arja Suominen.
"It was an unofficial meeting and we shall now start official talks," Suominen told AP news agency, but gave no details.
A spokesman for IG Metall in Düsseldorf told DPA news service of the meeting: "The management presented the closure plans again and repeated their inadequate and already known explanation of why."
Chancellor spoke with Nokia chief
Berthold Huber, IG Metall chief, told Bavarian public television: "This will be a fierce conflict if there is no other way and the management does not change its mind."
Ulrike Kleinebrahm, the IG Metall organizer in Bochum, said labor groups were creating their own plan to keep the factory running. She also called on German political leaders to keep up their pressure on Nokia, a cue which Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken.
On Tuesday, Jan. 22, Merkel revealed that she had personally phoned Nokia chief executive Kallasvuo, to reproach him for plans to close Germany's last factory making Nokia mobile phones.
"I made clear to him that I had no sympathy for the entire communication and everything connected to it," Merkel told NDR public radio in an interview.
She stressed that the federal economics ministry was still in talks with Nokia -- the world's largest cell-phone manufacturer -- about the closure, but said that both had agreed to keep the discussions confidential.
However, Merkel said she was skeptical that Nokia would alter its decision.
"If the decision is not altered, and it would seem to be that way, then everything possible must be done to ensure the people affected have a future," she said.
The chancellor said that she had also spoken with IG Metall's Huber, the head of the union representing most Nokia staff in Bochum.
She said the decision to close the plant demonstrated that government subsidies to businesses were "not a perpetual guarantee" that a factory would stay open. However, she said subsidies were needed "in exceptional cases."
Nokia has received over 80 million euros ($120 million) in state and federal subsidies during the 20 years of the plant's existence in Bochum.
Calls for Nokia boycott
German news media have been reporting that the growing calls for a boycott of Nokia products could force the company to offer the 2,300 staff the most expensive compensation plan in German corporate history.
The chairman of the Finnish branch of the activist network Attac, Mikko Sauli, told DPA that the boycott was to protest Nokia's decision to close the plant, adding that the group was not suggesting that people should throw away "a perfectly functioning cell phone" because that would not be "ecologically sustainable."
Sauli said Attac Finland was distributing the petition to other sister organizations, wanting to stress the need for an international "framework" guaranteeing "social responsibility."
Attac, which stands for the "Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions to Aid Citizens," was founded in France in 1998 and has since expanded internationally, with branches in dozens of countries.