Nokia Siemens reaches deal to cut 1,600 jobs in Munich

Nokia Siemens Networks struck a deal with a German labor union and agreed to cut 1,600 jobs at its main headquarters in Munich, but that the Munich site will remain open. The job cuts are part of broader ones in Germany and in the vendor as a whole, which is restructuring to focus exclusively on mobile broadband.

The German trade union IG Metall said that Nokia Siemens agreed to keep its Munich headquarters open and will employ around 2,000 people there. NSN will cut 1,300 jobs from sites across Germany to meet its target of cutting 2,900 jobs in the country. Nokia Siemens confirmed the agreement.

Earlier this month Siemens CFO Joe Kaeser criticized previous plans to shut down the Munich site. "Siemens will not accept without a fuss that NSN simply disappears from Munich," Kaeser told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. "It is really time for NSN management and labor representatives to sit down and constructively seek economically sustainable solutions for the Munich site."

Nokia Siemens said in November it would undergo a major restructuring and that it will slash up to 17,000 jobs by the end of 2013. NSN recently appointed telecom industry veteran Samih Elhage to the newly created position of COO to manage the company's restructuring. The vendor said last month it expects to take substantial charges in the first quarter related to the restructuring.

Since that November announcement NSN has sold several of its business units. In December it sold its wireline business to Adtran and its WiMAX business NewNet Communication Technologies, which is backed by private equity firm Skyview Capital. In November, NSN sold its microwave business unit to DragonWave.

For more:
- see this release
- see this Reuters article
- see this Dow Jones Newswires article

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