German unions on Thursday called for a consumer boycott of Nokia products to protest the cell phone maker's plans to close a German plant.
Nokia, the world's top cell phone maker, on Tuesday said it wants to move production to lower-cost regions and that the plant, in the western city of Bochum, is not competitive enough. The company has said it may cut up to 2,300 staff.
"Boycott Nokia!" Dietmar Muscheid, regional head of the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB), said in a statement.
"Whoever buys a cell phone today should think about the choice they are making and what catastrophic consequences the company's actions in Bochum will have for thousands of workers," said Muscheid, who heads the DGB in the southwest state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
The German government has urged Nokia to reconsider the plant closure and has threatened to block any European Union aid for the relocation. The European Commission, however, has said the cell phone maker will not receive any.
Pictures of sobbing plant employees, some holding up Nokia phones in protest, featured across the front pages of German newspapers on Thursday.
The premier of North-Rhine Westphalia, the western state where the factory is based, has attacked the plan and said Nokia risked appearing a "subsidy locust." Some politicians have said all subsidies received by the company should be repaid.
Voices from across the political spectrum were quick to join the criticism. "The closure of the Nokia plant in Bochum after having received EU financial aid is scandalous," said Left Party leader and former German finance minister Oskar Lafontaine.
Herbert Reul, a conservative European Parliament member, said the EU should now think about cutting the amount of subsidies it can give to companies by more than half.
He told the Kolner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper that the bloc should give companies only up to 20 million euros ($29.32 million) per project, as opposed to as much as 50 million at present.
Government officials will meet Nokia representatives this week to discuss the plant's future, the Financial Times Deutschland reported on Thursday.
"I'm not convinced by the various reasons given by Nokia for closing the plant," deputy economy minister Hartmut Schauerte, who will be taking part in the meeting, told the FTD.
The newspaper's editorial praised the closure as a wise step. "The management are acting with foresight...there is no real future for the mass production of everyday electronic goods in Germany."
Nokia says labor costs in Germany are nearly 10 times those in EU newcomer Romania, where it plans to move most of the production.
A company official told best-selling Bild newspaper that he saw "no scope" for going back on the decision to close the plant, which was made by the company before Christmas.
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