Nokia Siemens to eliminate 4,100 jobs in Finland and Germany

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), the world's second-largest telecom network equipment maker, yesterday said that it would eliminate 4,100 jobs in Finland and Germany, as the Finnish-German company struggles to cope with competition and weak global demand.

The latest round of job cuts is a part of the 17,000 eliminations announced by the Finnish company in November 2011 of from its global workforce of 74,000, within two years in order to save €1 billion in costs (See: Nokia Siemens Networks to cut 17,000 jobs to save €1 bn).

The joint venture between Nokia Corp and Siemens AG will cut 2,900 jobs out of a workforce of 9,100 in Germany and 1,200 out of 6,900 employees in Finland.

NSN said in a statement, in Finland official negotiations were scheduled to begin on February 8, and that employee retraining, job re-assignment and entrepreneurship support programmes would be introduced to help cushion the blow of the planned retrenchments.

NSN plans to continue its operations in Germany, which include optical networks development in Berlin, customer service in Bonn and Dusseldorf, production and development in Bruchsal and long term evolution technology in Ulm.

"We need to take the necessary steps to maintain long-term competitiveness and improve profitability in a challenging telecommunications market, these planned reductions are regrettable but necessary," NSN chief executive Rajeev Suri said in a company statement when the cuts were first announced in November.