Nokia Siemens Networks announced on Wednesday that it had redundancy talks in Finland, aiming to cut around 700 jobs this year. Nokia Siemens expects job cuts of around 70 in Oulu and 240 in Tampere. It said the biggest cuts would be made in Helsinki and Espoo, southern Finland, where 390 people could lose their jobs.

Last week, Managerial staff at Nokia Siemens Networks' facilities in Oulu, Espoo, Tampere and Helsinki in Finland staged a walkout on 4th May in protest against the Finnish-German joint venture's announcement that it would cut up to 1,700 jobs in Finland.
 

Hundreds of people walked out at the new company headquarters in suburban Helsinki after the job cut plans were unveiled, said union representative Pentti Arpalahti.

"The feeling is terrible, even though we have waited for the announcement," Arpalahti said. "People are partially shocked, but there is also resistance rising”.

Harri Kolula, senior employment relations official at Finland's Union of Salaried Employees, said: "As we are talking about a financially stable company, lay-offs should be avoided. Moving people to new positions within the company must be the primary aim."

A spokesman for German trade union IG Metall said the union had requested more information and protests were not ruled out.

Ari Tamminen, representing the managerial personnel, said between 1,000 and 2,000 people participated in the walkout, which began at 2pm. Those taking part are to return to work on Monday.

“While we have a great opportunity now that we are Nokia Siemens Networks, we also have to face the reality of the market," said Christoph Caselitz, chief market officer of Nokia Siemens Networks. "Many of our customers are facing intense cost pressure, relentless competition, and new business models. We must make the tough changes necessary to adapt to this reality and lower the cost of connectivity if we are to succeed in our vision of having five billion people in 2015 enjoying the benefits of being connected."

Nokia Siemens is a combination of the wired and wireless carrier infrastructure businesses of the two powerhouses. Plans for the company came together last June but were delayed by a bribery scandal involving Siemens. The units that formed Nokia Siemens had combined revenue in 2005 of €15.8bn (£10.7bn).

The joint venture of Nokia and Siemens, officially launched in April, is sticking with its estimate last year that it would reduce its work force of about 60,000 by 10% to 15% over four years.  The company repeated it aims globally to cut around 10,000 workers by 2010. Job cuts should save €1.5bn (£1.02bn) per year by the end of 2010, Nokia Siemens said. The company has to slash costs because its customers, the service providers, face intense competition and pricing pressure, according to the statement. Proposed changes to its product lineup are another factor, it said.  Also, to reach a goal of connecting more people to communication networks, costs will need to come down, according to Nokia Siemens.

The company announced it had begun sharing the plans with employees, as well as with employee representatives in Germany and Finland, where the parent companies are based. Some of the jobs will be shifted to business partners, the company said.  In Finland, it expects to remove 700 positions in the initial consultation process and cut a total of 1,500 to 1,700 jobs by the end of 2010. The company has about 10,000 workers in the country now.

"Our goal is to treat those who will depart from Nokia Siemens Networks with fairness and respect," said Bosco Novak, head of Human Resources for Nokia Siemens Networks. "This will require close partnership with employee representatives and we look forward to engaging in constructive discussions with them. It is our hope that through those discussions we can bring as much clarity to employees as soon as possible."

More than 60% of its employees already work outside Finland and Germany. The two home countries will remain major centers of employment for Nokia Siemens, the company said. Nokia Siemens Networks expects reductions in other countries where it has operations and additional details will be announced as appropriate given country-level consultation processes. While the company is based on a global organizational design, with global business units, functions and other organizations, the planned reductions will be carried out on a country-level, in full accordance with local laws.

The company said that as the planned reductions will take place over time, some of those reductions may come in the form of regular attrition. While the company will seek to move affected personnel to new positions where possible, there may also be the need to recruit personnel with competencies not currently available in a number of countries.

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