Following its acquisition of Franco-American rival Alcatel-Lucent, between 10,000 to 15,000 jobs globally is to be cut by telecom network equipment maker Nokia as part of a cost-cutting program, a Finnish union representative said.

While the Finnish company is yet to give a figure for how many jobs will be reduced in total, Nokia had kicked off the program in April with a target to slash 900 million euros ($1 billion) of operating costs by 2018.

“We haven’t heard any official numbers, but based on the information from our union contacts, I would estimate the global impact of this round would likely be around 10,000 to 15,000 jobs,” said Risto Lehtilahti, a trade union shop steward at Nokia’s Oulu site.

There were no comments available for the 10,000 – 15,000 figure form a Nokia spokeswoman.

Globally there are around 104,000 who work for Nokia.  Announcing that compared to an initial target of 1,300 jobs it was cutting around 1,000 Finnish jobs last week, Nokia specified its plan for its home country with regards ot cost curtailment and job cuts.

A target of reducing 1,400 positions in Germany has been fixed by the company. In line with a pledge to the French government during the Alcatel negotiations, the company would create 500 research and development posts in France even as the company has decided to that it would cut around 400 jobs therein that country.

While declining to give details on other countries, the Nokia spokeswoman said the company didn’t have any updates for France or Germany. In about 30 other countries, talks are being held with the employee representatives and Nokia about the proposed number of job cuts.

Tackling the weak network gear market has partly to do with the savings pan of Nokia. Earlier this month, the company had announced that the network sales for this year would fall.

“Some work will be completely terminated, some cuts come from Alcatel overlaps, and some work will be transferred to countries with lower costs,” said Tuula Aaltola, another Finnish shop steward.

The company already started to reduce U.S. jobs a year ago in preparation for their 15.6 billion euro merger, according to Communication Workers of America (CWA).

“We don’t know what Nokia’s plan is for the U.S.-based workforce. They have cut 500, cut our (unionised) workforce in half, and we hope that’s all that is going to be taken away,” CWA representative Lisa Bolton said.

He feared that Nokia would kick off another round of cuts at a later stage, Lehtilahti said.

As its once-dominant phone business was eclipsed by the rise of smartphone rivals, Nokia – the one time largest mobile phone maker of the world, has slashed thousands of jobs over the past decade in Finland. The phone business was eventually sold to Microsoft which has continued cutting jobs in the country.

(Adapted from CNBC)