On the presentation of the annual results of the Nokia company, Sahra Wagenknecht, member of the European Parliament and of the executive of the LEFT Party declares:

As became known today, 2007 was a great year for the Nokia enterprise: the turnover rose by 24 percent, profits could even be increased by 67 percent to 7.2 bln Euros. However, the 2300 employees of Nokia in Bochum will hardly be able to be happy about the results. Because, although the federal county of NRW and the city of Bochum since 1999 have subsidised the Nokia production site with more than 80 mln Euros, the business executive wants to relocate the cell phone production to Romania. There Nokia will not only have at its disposal a new industrial park – also subsidised in the millions –, wages and tax rates are also much lower there, which for the future promises even higher company earnings.

What can be done to counter this ruinous competition of industrial locations that costs countless jobs evey year – to say nothing of the pressure on wages, working conditions, social standards and tax rates? First of all, there need to be laws that prevent enterprises from closing locations in spite of good profits and from destroying jobs. Mass layoffs of this kind must and can be prohibited by law! Moreover, the ruling economic and subsidy policy needs to be thought over and changed. It makes no sense to subsidise the profits of private companies with sums reaching up to millions. Instead of fueling competition of industrial locations by handing over presents to private companies, public money had better be used for the creation of - stable - jobs in the public sector!

The case of Nokia shows one more time the absurdity of an economic order, where the wealth of society is created through the labour of some, while others, without the least bit of control, decide solely for reasons of shareholder value on what is done with the result of that labour. Globalised capitalism completely disregards the interests of the large of majority of the people. A debate on alternatives is urgently required.

Sahra Wagenknecht, MEP
Brussels, January 24, 2008