back to article Nokia to fire 1,700 staff

Nokia's UK offices will be among the hardest hit in a global round of 1,700 redundancies, announced today. The Finnish mobile phone giant's home operations will see the deepest cuts, with 700 staff targeted. UK operations will be next in line, but a spokeswoman couldn't immediately say how many staff at offices in Bristol, …

COMMENTS

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  1. Simon
    Unhappy

    This has been on the cards I guess...

    I applied for a permanent job there a few weeks ago and heard nothing back even though the agency said I had the best CV by far. Looks like this has been on the cards for a while...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Pandering to shareholders

    Obviously half a billion profit just isn't enough these days.

    Nokia stock up 4% on the news.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    UK not business friendly

    It's not in the Euro zone, so prices fluctuate with respect to the main market, Europe.

    It's doing quantitative easing, which means a) money you earn will be worth less when you come to repatriate your profits, b) Nobody will want to buy your bonds quoted in sterling because they'll be paid back in diluted sterling. i.e. leadership has fiscal diarrhoea.

    It's not part of Schengen zone, and does not respect free movement within the EU. It has even refused entry to a Dutch MP. Your staff may not be able to get into the country.

    It fingerprints 6 year olds, and locks up people for looking at manhole covers, or shouting 'rubbish' at Labour meetings.

    You cannot protect your UK staff from arbitrary sanction, MPs offices are raided for releasing documents of public interest. Photographing street now punishable.

    Until they can vote these idiots out and this situation can be turned around, Nokia are right to leave the UK.

  4. Richard
    Thumb Down

    @AC Pandering to shareholders

    This is what really upsets me about the currrent situation. People are losing their jobs not because a company is trading at a loss, but they can maximise profits by jettsoning staff. Many of these people are going to find it very hard to find alternative employment in the current situation. Companies should have some duty of care towards their employees as well as shareholders.

    It will be interesting to see which companies fail once we start to come out of recession because they have no R&D people and no next-generation products in the pipeline because the beancounters have only planned for the next two quarters.

  5. Andus McCoatover
    Unhappy

    Oh, God, I really feel for my ex-colleagues. Bad indeed.

    ..That seriously isn't sarcasm, but truth. I know the feeling they're going through, having been through it myself. I'm surviving (just).

    <Staff can sign up to resign, voluntarily, from the first of March and the offer remains open until 1,000 staff have signed up or the end of May, whichever is sooner.>

    What happened to that nice sweetner? In my calender, this is March, not May...

    Norf*, Kristian, "Two-boiled-eggs-in-a Docker's-hankie" if you're reading this, you have my sympaties, my friends.

    Sigh.

    Beginning of the end.

    *Memories 11 years ago of "Norf" coming to Finland for the first time to Helsinki. We almost wet ourselves at the "kick-bikes" on the streets. See

    http://www.kickbike.com/easydata/customers/kickbike/files/cross/eq_pinola_large.jpg

    (Obviously you need to try a few to get the hang of it...)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You see this

    You want to set up business in the UK? Take a look at what's happening there before you even consider it:

    http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/17/how-british-cops-are.html

  7. Steve
    Happy

    first to go

    I hope the 'designer' of the 6500c charger circuit is the first to go. It's a pile of stinking dingo's kidneys, lots of user complaints and no acknowlegement from Nokia.

  8. Pev
    Thumb Down

    Duty of care, my ar$e!

    Nokia is a corporation, employees are assets and are exploited as assets. Probably not even their best asset, all the best 'assets' saw the writing on the wall and left years ago.

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