Nokia Workers Protest After Partnership Between Nokia and Microsoft

After the declaration of the partnership among Nokia and Microsoft this morning workers voiced their anxiety with the deal by walking out of Nokia facilities.

It is supposed that as many as a thousand workers marched out today (or took the day off using flex time) so that the company would know that they don’t trust the partnership is in their best attention, even after CEO’ Stephen Elop’s startlingly frank “burning platform” memo earlier this week.

Several of the protestors work on the Symbian software so their jobs will be in jeopardy as Nokia begin to implement Windows Phone 7 on its handsets.

Their future is not at all clear after today’s news–broad strokes have been painted but a lot of the logistics have yet to be revealed.

Nokia will not work entirely with the Windows Phone 7 operating system (and they will be customizing it) so jobs will be preserved but Symbian will no more play the prominent role it once did at the company so job loss is expected.

No job reductions have been announce as of yet, but out of the 3000 people working at Nokia’s Tampere facility (which will be closed down) over half of them work on Symbian. We’ve heard in other information that cuts in headcount will be considerable.