Nokia’s Chennai plant, the one in Sri Perumbudur that used to assemble millions of phones, had come to a screeching halt when the Tamil Nadu High Court charged the Finnish company with tax evasion, to the tune of Rs. 3,000 crores. With some of the workers on indefinite leave and near-zero production at the plant, the whole ecosystem was thrown into imbalance, with clueless workers, indecisive management and painfully long court proceedings. With the future looking bleak, Nokia had offered its workers VRS (Voluntary retirement services), and about 5,000 of the ~7,500 employees have opted for it today.
The Chennai plant has been operational since 2006 and has been churning out all kinds of feature phones, including the recent Asha 501. In 2013, Nokia was accused of selling its phones in the local market, when it was supposed to be only exporting them out. This claim by the TN government was rubbished by the company and since then, the battles have been going on at the court. Efforts were made to make sure this does not affect the Microsoft acquisition of the company, which finally closed on April 24th. The factory is now leased to Microsoft on a contract basis, but it looks like the facility is mostly done for. Nokia was already building its biggest facility in Vietnam, and was looking at moving some production there, so it is more likely to happen now, with all the tensions surrounding this facility.
Some have accused Nokia of categorically abandoning the market once the SEZ perks have lapsed, but the overall sentiment from workers has been shock and disappointment. We had earlier visited the factory, for a tour of the Asha 501 production, and it seemed like the workers were mostly positive of the company they worked for. But now, with the jobs gone and uncertainty regarding the outcome of the court hearing, Nokia and its employees have parted ways. We are not sure what the remaining employees are going to do, but the company is supposedly helping out with “Bridge” schemes, which includes consultancies for banking and employment, just like what they had offered in Finland, after the Salo plant closed. We’ve heard that Nokia’s Bridge program is really generous and helpful, so we hope it applies to the workers here in the same effect, too.
via The Hindu