Workers from a Nokia factory in Southern China protested outside their workplace on Wednesday after the company sold its mobile telephone business to Microsoft Corp in September.
Reuters reports that the workers from the Dongguan Zhangmutou Towada Electronics Factory are demanding compensation they say is owed to them by factory management. Also, they believe that the sale will result in worse employment terms and working conditions.
In an email to Reuters, Nokia said that it is talking to the protesters and the manufacturing operations in Dongguan are continuing.
“To accommodate the temporary situation, we have also adjusted our operations in other manufacturing facilities,” the company said.
The industrial unrest comes in the context of several other recent protests against foreign owned manufacturers operating in China.
Earlier this month, workers from a Japanese-owned electronics factory in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong took part in a protest that included nationalistic and anti-Japanese rhetoric.
In July, there was a strike at the premises of joint venture of US-based Cooper Tire & Rubber Co and state-owned tire maker Chengshan Group. The workers there opposed the sale of Cooper to an Indian firm.
And in June, an American factory boss was held hostage in a Beijing plant by workers who were demanding severance pay.