Berlin - A German government minister said Friday he was joining in a boycott of Nokia mobile phones after the Finnish manufacturer announced it was closing Germany's last surviving wireless handset factory. Horst Seehofer, the German agriculture minister, told reporters in Berlin that he was changing to another brand of mobile phone "because I don't like the way they are doing this."
A trade union leader in North Rhine-Westphalia state, Dietmar Muscheid, had said the previous day that German shoppers should consider the "disastrous effects of this company's behaviour on thousands of employees."
The Social Democratic whip in the federal parliament, Peter Struck, told the newspaper Bild he would give up his Nokia phone too.
The plant at Bochum, western Germany employs 2,300 people. Most of the manufacturing operation is to move to low-pay Cluj, Romania. A German newspaper, Rheinische Post, said the Cluj production line had already made a test run.
Nokia makes four out of every 10 mobile phones sold worldwide. The factory-gate price of a no-frills phone has fallen to less than 10 euros (14 dollars), industry observers said this week in Hamburg.
Economics Ministry Secretary Hartmut Schauerte said earlier he had arranged a meeting "soon" in Berlin with Nokia senior management to discuss the closure, announced in Helsinki Tuesday.
The newspaper Financial Times Deutschland said the meeting would take place "this week."
A Nokia spokesman said Thursday that the company would not enter into discussions with German authorities about keeping the Bochum plant in operation. The company has been accused of ingratitude, because it accepted state subsidies in the past.
