Nokia in Germany

Today I have something different to report, not the weekly trip to England. Some of you may remember January 2005 when Nokia announced the closing of our department at the research and development site in Bochum. It ended up not being a complete closing, but a ramp down of 100 people. At that time they were looking for volunteers to leave for a compensation payment and I really considered doing this. Well, you all know that I changed my plans to just going on a three months leave (my Alaska winter ;o)).
Again it was January, again it was the second Tuesday and again Nokia announced a closing. But this time of a much larger scale. This time they announced the closing of the whole Bochum site including the production facility. 2300 people are affected by this this time. And while most of the engineers won't have many problems finding a new job, especially when they consider moving to a different area of Germany, for a great number of factory workers this will be almost impossible. Nokia decided that producing mobile phones in Germany is much too expensive comparing to Romania. When reading this you should have two things in mind:
1. Nokia is the world market leader and had a fantastic business year 2007
2. The expenses for human resources make only maximum 5% of the mobile devices costs.

The announcement came as a big surprize for almost everyone. And we heard of it through the newspaper and internet before the employees were informed by the Nokia management. Well, there are reasons for all of it, but it is not a very respectful way of treating people.
Since Friday Nokia is on TV, in the newspaper and on the radio every hour. Politicians are involved now discussion subventions for Nokia in Bochum and also in Romania and the consequences of globalization. Right now while I am writing this a demonstration takes place with Nokia people, but also employees from Opel ( a car company in Bochum) and a steel company. I don't think that all these activities can stop the closing, this decision was made long ago, but maybe it will increase the severence payment for everybody.

Now you might ask what this means to me. Well, personally I am not really surprized (there were a lot of signs for that during the last months) and I am not too sad. Sure, I like my colleagues, but on the other hand Dave and I will leave in a little bit more than 1.5 years. That also means I would have to quit my job anyhow. And hopefully this will give me some more time for Dave, the dogs, taking care of the house and my yard here in Germany. And hopefully the trips to England can be a little bit longer and not just for weekends. You see, you don't have to worry about me.

Okay, ready for some non Nokia news? A week ago we sent out the invitations for the wedding in Alaska. Yesterday Dave found out that they were not sent. Since the format is a little bit strange he had to send it as packages, even if they are very small. The post office forgot to tell him they need a customs sticker on it. Well, now they told him. Grrrrr. The went out yesterday so hopefully you will receive them within the next week. Sorry for the delay.

I also picked up the wedding rings. And I can tell you: I love them! I am so excited.

Enough news for today. Tomorrow is my brother's birthday and therefore Dave and I will spend the weekend in Germany. The weather forcast is not very good, but hopefully we can do some fun things even if it rains.