Posted by
Femalecentury on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 9:14:51 AM
It is only a few years ago that NOKIA offered to create jobs in Germany by setting up a production plant for Mobile Phones in Bochum in the center of Germany. Germany, as an economy struggling with a high unemployment rate, offers investors subsidies for creating employment opportunities. NOKIA received a total of Euro 40 Million (equals USD 65 Million as per today´s currency exchange rate). Well, that was approx. 5 years ago.
In January this year, NOKIA announced that it would close down the Bochum plant and move its Mobile Phone production to Rumania, one of the new European Memeber States. Nokia argued that one one side the german mobile phone market was suggregated with (among others) Nokia mobile phones, that no high growth rates in mobile phone sales could be expected on the german market and that production in Rumania would be cheaper and the Rumania mobile phone market promissed big turnover.
The Nokia employees in Bochum ran storm against this announcement from the Finland based headquarter of NOKIA, but without result. It was the department related to granting and monitoring the use of subsidies of the german State of Northrhine Westphalia that came up with the notion and with the accusation that NOKIA had "misused" the cashed in subsidies by not meeting the conditions. In a nutshell: NOKIA had failed to create approx. 100 of the promissed number of jobs in its Bochum work. The state of Northrhine -Westphalia set out to take NOKIA to court and it appeared for a while that NOKIA did not mind going through the court procedures.
In may, NOKIA and the State of Northrhine Westphalia finally came to an agreement: NOKIA refunds (no information available so far in what way this refund will be done, i.e. in cash or in the form of some jobs left in the NOKIA Bochum plant) Euro 30 Million (approx. USD 48 Million). And that appears to be the end of the story. What remains is a bad taste on the tongue. No guarantee that NOKIA will behave in other countries different from the way it behaved in Germany. After NOKIA is gone, some thousand people in Germany are back on the street. Should be something the peole in Rumania and other countries selling NOKIA mobile phones should consider taking into consideration when planning life on a job with NOKIA. What are the sales rates for NOKIA mobile phones in the U.S.? What is the growth rate potential and the number of jobs depending on that potential growth rates?