Mobile phone giant Nokia Oyj said that it will eliminate about 450 jobs globally as it reorganizes its services unit to cut costs and better target its investments.

Nokia said that the changes are also designed to simplify customer experiences and open up opportunites for outside developers of mobile phone applications. Nokia, based in Finland, also announced plans to streamline its internal information technology unit and corporate development office unit.

It was unclear what impact that the job cuts will have on Nokia’s offices in Harrison.

“Where applicable, Nokia will start consultations with employee representatives about these plans,” the company said in a written statement. “All of these measures are part of Nokia’s previously announced plans to adjust its business operations and cost base in accordance with market demand and to safeguard future competitiveness.”

In February, Nokia made a “voluntary resignation package,” available to most of its employees worldwide. Nokia said employees were eligible to apply for the severance until 1,000 had done so, or until May 31.

Nokia, the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, cut its dividend in January after phone sales slumped as a result of the severe economic downturn.

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Inc. plans to lay off 13 unionized workers in the packaging department at its Pearl River plant, a company spokesman confirmed today.

The unionized jobs are being eliminated to align the size of the work force with the company’s production needs, Grace Ann Arnold said. The demand for products produced in Pearl River has dropped, she said.

She stressed that the cuts have nothing to do with the company’s pending purchase by Pfizer Inc. Pfizer and Wyeth announced in January that Pfizer would buy Wyeth for $68 billion.

Pfizer has said that it will close factories but has not identified which ones.

Kevin Puglia, the president of Local 143C of the International Chemical Workers Union, said workers are on edge about the purchase.

“There’s certainly the anticipation of stress in this place,” he said. “Nobody’s sure what’s coming.”
The 13 workers who got the bad news this week work in the part of the Wyeth operation that packages the Centrum vitamins, he said.

Usually when the company eliminates jobs the workers are able to take other jobs that the company has left open, Puglia said. “But there’s no place for these people to land,” he said.

When Citigroup Inc. recently announced plans to cut about 52,000 jobs worldwide in coming months, it was the biggest downsizing announced this year by a company with a major presence in the Lower Hudson Valley.

But it was hardly the only local downsizing to make headlines. Other notable job cuts announced by area companies in recent months included PepsiCo Inc. of Purchase (3,300 jobs worldwide), Olympus Surgical & Industrial America Inc. (170 jobs in Orangeburg) and Boscov’s, the shuttered department store in the Nanuet Mall (120 lost jobs).

As the local pain intensified, a national study released yesterday painted a bleak picture of the U.S. job market. Job cuts nationally surged to a seven-year high of 181,671 positions in November as companies tightened their belts in response to the global financial crisis, lackluster consumer spending and a weakening economy, according to the report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

The November job cut totals rose 61 percent from the October numbers and 148 percent from the totals in November 2007. November was the worst month for job cuts since January 2002, when the economy was struggling to rebound from the September 11 terrorist attacks.

“Those hoping for a holiday reprieve in downsizing as Christmas approaches could be disappointed,” said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “The spirit of the holidays will not preclude further job-cutting if economic conditions continue to deteriorate. In fact, December has historically been among the larger job-cut months of the year, with many employers making last-minute staffing adjustments to meet year-end earnings goals.”

Job cuts for the year have exceeded 1 million positions for the first time since 2005.

The massive job cuts disclosed by troubled Citigroup, which has 26 offices in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties and $5.08 billion in deposits, were among the 91,356 job cuts announced last month by the financial services industry, according to the report.

“Obviously, the financial sector is still struggling,” Challenger said. “Heavy job cutting also continued in the automotive sector. It is too soon to tell if and when government intervention will be effective at stemming the rate of job cuts. These sectors are going through radical changes that could irrevocably alter their makeup.”

Kraft Foods Inc. said that it will eliminate 30 jobs from its Tarrytown complex by the end of the year as part of a national program to cut costs.

The cuts affect about 5 percent of a work force of about 600 at the Tarrytown site that includes Kraft employees and contractors in a beverage unit that oversees such brands as Maxwell House, Country Time, Kool-Aid and Crystal Light.

The job cuts in Tarrytown are part of 400 job reductions in the United States and Canada that Kraft plans by the end of 2008. Kraft, the world’s second-largest food company, also plans cuts at its corporate headquarters in Northfield, Ill., and offices in Toronto, Glenview, Ill., East Hanover, N.J and Madison, Wis.

Kraft is cutting jobs at a time when food companies nationally are facing higher ingredient prices and consumers are watching their spending in a weakening economy.

The Insl-X Products Corp. paint plant in Stony Point will close by Dec. 30, eliminating 60-65 jobs in Rockland County, a spokeswoman for the company’s new owner said.
Benjamin Moore & Co. announced in March that it had acquired Insl-X from owner James A. Weil of Scarsdale. Moore spokeswoman Eileen McComb said about two dozen office jobs in Stony Point, the Insl-X headquarters, would be moved to Moore’s headquarters in Montvale, N.J.
Terms of Moore’s acquisition of Insl-X were not disclosed. Moore is owned by Berkshire Hathaway Co.
Insl-X has been in Stony Point for 18 years. It was founded in 1948 by Weil’s father. Insl-x makes and sells its own brand of finishes; a number of acquisitions allowed it to expand from specialty and industrial products to architectural coatings.
In February the company paid off a $5.5 million bond that had been issued through the Rockland County Industrial Development Agency for the acquisition of 15 acres and the plant.
McComb said Moore bought the company because it would complement Moore’s holdings.
“I think we understood that some of the production was redundant,” she said. Moore has six paint plants, including one near Albany and another in New Jersey.
McComb said Moore will continue to operate Insl-X plants in Edgewater, Fla., San Antonio and Fort Worth, Texas, and Elk Grove, Ill.
Ronald Hicks, chief executive officer of Rockland Economic Development Corp., said the business group has offered to help Moore market the 150,000-square-foot property for sale or lease.

The Journal News cut 12 jobs today citing further erosion in ad revenue from retail, housing, automotive and employment sectors of the economy.

The cuts were part of a larger plan by the newspaper’s parent company, Gannett Co. Inc., to eliminate 1,000 jobs across the company’s 84 news properties in its Community Publishing division, which includes The Journal News and LoHud.com.

The number of positions eliminated at each newspaper was determined locally, McLean, Va.-based Gannett said.