Hundreds of IT jobs at risk as Nokia plans to downsize

Up to 425 jobs could face the axe in Finland as Nokia announces a new round of layoffs, with the Finnish network equipment maker beginning redundancy talks with its staff on 22 February.

The talks will affect up to 350 jobs across its network business and support functions, and up to 75 jobs in its Nokia Technologies unit.

“The planned change measures are essential to ensure Nokia’s long-term competitiveness,” Tommi Uitto, Nokia Finland’s country senior officer, said in a statement. “Market conditions among communications service providers were challenging last year, and as we have said previously, the market is expected to shrink further this year.”

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The layoffs are expected to hit all of Nokia’s offices in Finland, with the exception of its factory based in Oulu. Nokia today has some 6,300 employees in its home country and around 103,000 globally.

Samu Salo, chairman of the Union of Professional Engineers in Finland, raised concerns over the latest news but admitted they didn’t come as a surprise: “We were expecting something like this after Nokia’s earlier announcements,” he told Computer Weekly.

“But we don’t quite understand why [these redundancies hit Finland] again.”

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