US President Donald Trump has repeatedly stressed the need to seek localization of US jobs and praised Finland's Nokia for providing advanced 5G technology through US laboratories at a White House press conference on Wednesday with Finnish President Suli Ninesto.
Trump called on his allies to buy the fifth-generation technology from the Finnish company.
Nokia acquired Bell's plants as part of its $ 16 billion acquisition of the Alcatel Group in 2016.
In addition to Nokia's headquarters in Espoo, Finland, Bell's laboratories are a center of research and development for Nokia's fifth generation technologies.
Nokia allows carriers and other customers to test 5G technologies in their real business environments.
"The president is wrong"
The American Telecommunications Workers 'Union (CWI) has wasted no time in issuing a statement to respond to Trump's comments in order to gain influence in any of its members' negotiations with the Finnish company.
The union said that Nokia "is currently trying to eliminate all telecommunications installers represented by the union by the displacement of good jobs abroad and the termination of the American workforce with high skills."
The union explained that some staff were working remotely in test and integration centers, and many of those posts had already been transferred from the United States to Romania and India.
Trump's comments about Nokia are wrong about Nokia's nationalization of US jobs, and Trump should listen to union members who have been in negotiations for more than a year with Nokia to reach a fair deal to maintain their workforce in the United States.
| One worker installs fifth-generation unit on New York City building (Reuters) |
"Nokia employs more than 14,000 people in North America and we treat all employees with fairness and respect, including those represented by the union. We will remain committed to negotiating with them until an agreement is reached," said a Nokia representative.
As of 2017, about 12,200 Nokia employees were working in the United States. Although Nokia has since demobilized a few hundred people, the company has not announced massive layoffs from the United States in recent months.
Questions about Huawei
At a press conference on Wednesday, Finnish President Nenisto was asked about Huawei and whether the company's network equipment could pose a security threat to countries that allow service providers to use it. .
He said the risk assessment should be completed within two weeks, adding that European countries had a different relationship with Huawei compared to the United States.
"In Europe, the situation may be somewhat different from here, because the main company I mentioned - meaning Huawei - is at least partly in Europe," he said.
Huawei, the world's largest supplier of wireless networking devices, remains ahead of Sweden's Ericsson and Finland's Nokia in the field of 5G technology.