Nokia workers walk out to protest Microsoft deal

More than 1,000 Nokia employees have walked out of the company’s offices to protest the just-announced deal between Microsoft and the mobile handset giant, according to a report in Finnish newspaper Helsingin Santomat.

You can read an English version of the story here, courtesy of Google Translate. The walkout occurred at Nokia’s Tampere offices in Finland, where about 1,500 of the nearly 3,000 employees work on the Symbian operating system — the same operating system that will be phased out in favor of Windows Phone 7 as part of the deal. (Though see the caveats from a Nokia spokesperson in the comments of our initial announcement post.)

Employees at the Oulu offices, where about half of the 2,000-person workforce is involved in Symbian, reportedly “erupted” after the announcement.

Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop has confirmed that the company will be cutting jobs in Finland and other countries. The chairman of a local white-collar labor union estimated that the restructuring will mean the loss of thousands of Finnish jobs, and the country’s economic minister described the move as “the biggest structural reform that has ever impacted new technology in Finland.”

[Image via Helsingin Santomat. Story found via Thinq.]