A German trade union, IG Metall, said Tuesday its talks with Finnish mobile-phone manufacturer
Nokia had been fruitless and promised a fierce fight to keep an ailing German factory open.
German labour groups are furious at Nokia''s decision to close the plant in the western city of Bochum and move most of the operation to Cluj, Romania where labour to assemble the handsets costs less.
Union officials met Monday with Nokia management in Helsinki.
German news media say the growing storm and calls for a boycott of the Nokia brand may force the company to offer the 2,300 staff the most expensive compensation plan in German corporate history.
An IG Metall state in Dusseldorf said, "The management presented the closure plans again and repeated their inadequate and already known explanation of why."
Berthold Huber, the union president, said on Bavarian public television: "This will be a fierce conflict if there is no other way and the management does not change its mind."
The IG Metall organizer in Bochum, Ulrike Kleinebrahm, said labour groups were drafting their own plan on how to keep the factory operating. She called on German political leaders, to keep up their pressure on Nokia. dpa jbp ds
Source: dpa
