Nokia Workers In Finland Take Collective Lunch Break In Protest Of Windows Phone 7 Deal

It would appear, according to Finnish paper HS.fi Uutiset that workers at at least one Nokia development location in Tampere, Finland, are walking out in protest of the deal made official this morning between Nokia and Microsoft. While a member of the senior staff at this particular location, Kalle Wedge, noted "Aika moni käytti joustavaa työaikaa," aka "Quite a few people used their flexible working time [their break] to do this protest."

Doing a walk-out during the time you'd normally have a break anyway would seem like it would be rather ineffective, so we must assume there's something else going on here, as it appears that massive confusion via rumors have been spreading in other locations such as Oulu, where at the moment of the 2,000 employees, 1,000 work on Symbian, while 600 work with MeeGo. At the Tampere location about half of the employees currently work on Symbian.

A massive walking out or protest or combination of the two would be right in order with the notes and actions that've been playing out and reported today. Take a peek at Nokia announcing "Substantial reductions in employment around the world and Google's Aidan Biggins tweets "Any Nokia software engineers need a job? We're hiring: www.google.com/jobs".

Hs.fi Uutiset reports that these engineers are afraid for their jobs and seek answers as their confusion over the future of each of their individual branches appears to hang in the balance. The Marine, Finland branch noted that although the Symbian side of development would be gradually reduced, these workers would more than likely just transfer over to working with Windows Phone, and that thus there's no reason to fear.

[via Geek]